Saturday, 29 August 2026
Will the Venezuelan people benefit from this huge oil deal with the US?
The US is going to have its hands on 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil in a huge deal between Caracas and Washington that will bring private American investment into the earthquake-hit country. Ostensibly, this will be good news for the poor country which has been ravaged by corruption and super-corrupt leadership for so long. Ex-President Nicolas Maduro may be in a US jail awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges. But he left behind the remnants of his power base in charge. The deal has been done with the interim president, Delcy Rodriguez. But will this really be a massive optimism boost for the whole country which is going to suffer from the earthquake damage for years to come? And will all the money be invested in improving the lives of the people or will it get salted away into private bank accounts? It is difficult to predict because the leadership during the Maduro era was awash with corruption. Is Delcy Rodriguez who was Maduro's vice president and therefore must have known what was going on all those years, now going to be the country's saviour? Trump decided that she was a woman he could do business with and this is why we now have this massive oil deal which will provide the US with all the oil reserves it feels it needs for the future. Is there any small print in the deal which offers guarantees that the quid pro quo for the oil will be a much-improved economy in Venezuela and a better standard of living for its people? The people who negotiated the deal were Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary. A very odd combination unless there is some sort of security guarantee included which we don't know about. The Venezuela story still has an unknown end.
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