Trump's Venezuela oil move

0:00Donald Trump has said that he'll meet with oil refining executives days after announcing that the US would take a huge stake in Venezuela's oil reserves. The US president announced that the Elon Friday, saying it would give the US majority control of 65 billion barrels of recoverable oil, which he said would be used in part to replenish the US's strategic petroleum reserve. Venezuela has the world's largest proven reserves. This government has operated under intense pressure from the Trump administration since US forces kidnapped its longtime ruler Nicolas Maduro at the start of this year. Well, John DeFeli has a great insight into the region, having served in a number of diplomatic postings across Latin America, ending as US ambassador to Panama. He's now executive director for the Centre for Media Integrity of the Americas. Welcome to DW. As ever with this administration, there's a lot of detail missing, not least the identity

1:01of the US company that will be given control of these vast amounts of Venezuela's untapped oil reserves. Why do you think that might be kept a secret? I think Phil, because this latest announcement last Friday by the president just reaffirms a pension that we've seen since the beginning of the Second Administration for a big beautiful announcement in search of a substantive deal underneath. I think if you, you know, I'm thinking of the Gaza Peace Plan, I'm thinking of the Iran MOU back in June. Big announcements, a lot of sort of gaudy, you know, Versailles kind of trappings, but once you get a couple of days, weeks, months out, there really isn't a lot of there there. And the second thing, I think, the reason that you haven't seen a lot of that detail is because this particular announcement smacks of desperation to me. I think they're coming up on November, oil prices and gasoline prices here in the United

2:07States remain above $4 a gallon. And I think this was very much intended to have a political effect, but quite frankly, according to most experts I've read, not much of a practical effect. Really, so you think that there is nothing to this deal? That's interesting, because one of the names that has come up with regard to this deal is the man behind Venezuela's second largest private oil producer, Alejandro Beton-Cortel Lopez, whose family controls North American blue energy partners. What can you tell us about him and how this private company might fit into any deal concerning Venezuela and state oil interests? Yeah, he's a Venezuelan oil speculator. He's somebody who made a significant amount of money if you're looking at the press only by basically upcharging the Chavez government to bring in a significant amount of energy

3:10producing hardware, oil, turbines, things like that, over 15 years ago or so. Since then, he's taken a lot of those windfall profits and he's mostly been on the run from tax authorities and financial investigators in Spain and Great Britain. If you follow some of the press that's been written about him recently, the American administration even had to go to Swiss prosecutors to ask them to drop a case they had looking into his financial impropriety. And I have no, obviously I have no knowledge of any of that, but the reporting on him and on North American blue energy partners is that they simply can't raise this kind of money. I mean, let's just do some basic arithmetic here for a second Phil and then math and public's always a little dangerous. 65 billion barrels of oil, going to cost $100 billion of investment.

4:10Donald Trump says not a dime of that is going to come from taxpayers. So you've got to ask the question, is this Alejandro Betancourt going to raise that on his own? I think most investors, most investment committees and hedge funds or sovereign wealth funds, times of places that normally put money into these ventures. If they've got a serious board of directors, they're going to need a lot more information before they even think about putting money into it. OK. So setting aside your skepticism, your deep skepticism about whether or not this deal will actually happen. If it happened, who do you think would be likely to benefit and who might lose from a deal like this? Let's start with the second. Who might lose from this? And this is, I think, a very important point that's obscured in a lot of the announcement and the mathematics and the numbers floating around. The people who lose are the people of Venezuela. According to the Venezuelan Constitution and at least two articles, the petroleum reserves

5:13of the Venezuelan, of Venezuela, the physical territory of the sovereign state of Venezuela belong to the Venezuelan people. So if this deal goes through, if there is some kind of a magic wand that produces maybe not a hundred billion, but even let's say 50 or $25 billion worth of investment, according to what's been announced, that belongs, that oil belongs now to the American people. And that's a serious problem. Since January 3rd, the president of the United States, when he ordered the takedown of Nicholas Maduro, you've heard his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, talk about a three-phase plan. The three-phase plan was they were going to do stabilization, recovery, and transition, transition to a democratic system of government in Venezuela, which is exactly what Exxon

6:14and Conoco Phillips and all the major, major oil companies want because it gives you a better business climate, it gives you stability, et cetera. You know who has never, Phil, in all this time mentioned those three words, President Trump. Right. So there's a concern about the democratic future of the Venezuelan people as a result of last Friday's announcement. Okay, so announcement last Friday, you think that there's nothing to it. People who might agree with you seem to be other governments in the region. The reaction to this news has been really, really muted. Nothing from Brazil, nothing from Colombia, nothing from Mexico. Do you think that's because they think like you that this, nothing's going to happen? Or are they scared of pushback from the US? I think both of those are probably legitimate speculations as to why other major oil producers in the region haven't said anything.

7:15You know, it's, again, let's go back to the Gaza Peace Plan. Let's go back to the Iranimo U, signed it for Pallas just in June. I think international observers have begun to recognize that perhaps as we head here domestically in the United States into November, the best they can take is just to stay quiet. Sort of whether you're a friend, an enemy, or a frenemy of Donald Trump. When you see someone in freefall mode, there's really not much incentive to go after and try to prop him up or help him or align yourself with him. And I think that's what you're seeing the Latin American oil producers doing right now. Just stand back and watch in the show. Meanwhile, Delsey Rodriguez is only a Venezuela's interim president. When the country's situation finally normalizes, could a future government challenge this still or even reverse it?

8:15You know, it's funny that you mentioned that, Phil, because we had this announcement on Friday, and I think it was either Friday night or Saturday. One of the presidents, very strong Cuban-American congressional supporters, a woman by the name of Maria Vida Salazar, came out with a tweet that was on X. Now we call it, sorry, I dated myself there, but came out with a post that said, this was a terrible deal, she's been a very strong defender of Maria Curina Machado, and the Democratic opposition in Venezuela. And she basically said, this deal doesn't survive 2028 when Donald Trump leaves office. Well within about two hours, she took it down and replaced it with a very raw, raw cheerleading post, which very clearly means that somebody from the White House reached out to her and gave her a swift rap across the knuckles and said, hey, that's not the line. But the original post is exactly what I think a lot of people, both in Venezuela and in

9:16the United States, are thinking, is that when President Trump leaves office, this deal will be as dead as anything else that he's proclaimed, such as a Gaza peace plan and resorts in Gaza. Thanks for talking us through that. So graphically, John, John DeFili from the Center for Media Integrity of the Americas.