Trump admin in talks for US stake in Venezuela oil: report

NEW YORK

Interim President Delcy Rodriguez wants to open the country’s energy sector to foreign investors. Venezuela sits on vast oil reserves.

President Donald Trump's administration is in talks with Venezuela's interim government about the United States taking an ownership stake in the South American country's vast oil resources, the news site Axios has reported.

The discussions involve more than a dozen productive oil fields with 90 billion barrels of proven reserves, about a third of Venezuela's total proven reserves of 300 billion barrels, the report said on Aug. 27, citing two unnamed U.S. officials.

In return for a U.S. ownership stake, private companies, including American firms, would develop the fields and return more oil revenue to Venezuela, according to Axios.

Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves. The deal would more than double U.S. oil reserves at a time when the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve is at a 40-year low, the report said.

Nearly eight months after the U.S. deposed former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in a military raid, interim president Delcy Rodriguez has sought to open Venezuela to foreign investment, particularly in the energy sector.

She runs Venezuela under strong pressure from Trump, who wants to take charge of the country's oil industry.

The Trump administration has been urging U.S. companies to invest in Venezuela, but they remain wary due to dilapidated infrastructure and past appropriation of assets of foreign investors by the government in
Caracas.

Chevron, the only U.S. oil company that was still operating in Venezuela when Maduro was ousted, said in July that it had raised its daily crude production to 280,000 barrels and plans to increase output by 50 percent by the end of 2028.