The news exclusively reported by Axios on Thursday confirms just how far the handover of oil to the United States has progressed. According to two U.S. officials cited by the outlet, the Donald Trump administration has reached an agreement with the government led by Delcy Rodríguez in which the United States will obtain a direct stake in the ownership of several Venezuelan oil fields. On Friday, in a social media post, Trump made the agreement public: “The United States of America has just signed an agreement with Venezuela on the largest oil deal in world history,” he wrote. According to Rodríguez, who confirmed the infamous handover, the deal involves 17 strategic oil fields.

The fields in question hold some 65 billion barrels of proven reserves. These do not represent all of Venezuela’s reserves — estimated at around 300 billion barrels — but they alone constitute a massive amount of resources. Axios notes that the agreement could more than double the United States’ proven oil reserves. One of the U.S. officials consulted by this publication was particularly explicit: “To call this agreement huge would be an understatement. It’s massive.”

The talks were led by Rodríguez and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with other high-ranking officials from Washington. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright is also preparing a visit to Venezuela to discuss how to increase production by U.S. companies. He is the same official who has stated bluntly, “Venezuela’s resources must be integrated into the U.S. market to ensure U.S. national security.”

This agreement didn’t come out of nowhere. A few days ago, Hydrocarbons Minister Paula Henao traveled to Houston to promote “investment opportunities” in Venezuela. There, she signed agreements with the U.S. company Hunt Oil — a production-sharing contract for the Caro and Carisito fields — and with SLB (formerly known as Schlumberger, the world’s largest oil-field services company) for technological services and reservoir characterization. Apparently, Henao’s trip was not limited to negotiating with these oil companies but was also aimed at reaching the major agreement with Trump that has now been made public.

But there is another notable detail. According to Bloomberg, Venezuela is considering leaving OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), which it helped found in 1960. This is a policy clearly guided by the United States to facilitate Washington’s plans. If it materializes, it would mark a drastic shift in the country’s oil policy, which once sought some measure of sovereignty in the hydrocarbons sector but now follows the neocolonial course imposed by Trump.

They Are after Complete Control

The national government’s propaganda, which publicized the agreement via Rodríguez’s social media accounts, presents this national surrender as an opportunity to “recover” the oil industry. But the reality that is taking shape is exactly the opposite: the United States is moving from controlling Venezuela’s oil revenues to taking direct control of oil fields and their exploitation.

The figures on this plunder are staggering. As we have reported in La Izquierda Diario, Luigi Pisella, a member of the Special Commission for the Evaluation and Classification of Public Assets, stated that during the first half of 2026, Venezuela’s oil revenue totaled about $14.5 billion. According to his calculations, some $4.7 billion did not enter the country and remained in Washington’s hands to cover the alleged “cost” of the U.S. military operation on January 3. But Washington is also keeping almost all of the remainder.

Venezuela can no longer freely dispose of the revenue generated by its main export resource. The Trump administration centralizes revenues linked to Venezuelan oil under U.S. supervision. The result is a situation that can hardly be described as anything other than an absolute loss of economic and political sovereignty. No metaphor can hide such a relationship of domination.

There is a statement by the U.S. official quoted by Axios that is particularly revealing. Aware of accusations that the government headed by Rodríguez is handing over natural resources to the United States, the official stated, “We are doing everything possible to demonstrate how this will benefit the people of Venezuela, because it will.” In other words, they are trying to spin the narrative, fully aware of the sheer robbery they are carrying out.

But what “benefit for the people” can there be when the power that bombed the country controls the revenues from its main source of wealth and now seeks to gain a direct stake in its oil fields? What benefit exists when the resources that should finance wages, health care, education, housing, infrastructure, and reconstruction end up subject to the decisions of the U.S. Treasury?

What has taken shape in Venezuela is an entirely new regime of domination, a stark form of neocolonial protectorate, in which the imperialist power decides on strategic resources, revenue, investments, and a large part of the economic conditions under which the Venezuelan state operates. Trump’s so-called Donroe Doctrine — the attempt to reinforce U.S. hegemony over the hemisphere — finds one of its most brutal testing grounds in Venezuela.

With the finalization of this agreement, we are witnessing one of the largest contemporary operations involving the handover of a Latin American country’s strategic resources to an imperialist power. The government headed by Rodríguez has become the political guarantor of this new relationship of subordination, presenting as “economic recovery” what amounts to an accelerated opening to imperialist corporations. It is a plan in which the opposition — such as that led by María Corina Machado — converges in its acceptance of this new relationship of subordination to the United States.

In the Face of Plunder, Sovereignty for the Workers and the People: No to Imperialism

Venezuelan oil must serve the needs of the working and popular majorities, not the Pentagon, the U.S. Treasury, or the profits of oil corporations. While the working population suffers from starvation wages, hyperinflation, and the collapse of basic public services, the profits from oil revenues finance the machinery of transnational capital and imperialism.

That is why we demand the immediate return of all oil revenues withheld by the United States, the rejection of any agreement that hands over ownership or control of Venezuelan oil fields to U.S. companies, and an end to Washington’s protectorate. Enough of imperialist plunder.

Workers in the United States must wholly reject these agreements, and fight for the right of the Venezuelan working class to control their own resources and determine their own futures. To confront this predatory colonialist advance and stop the plunder of our wealth, it is imperative that the working class and popular sectors independently mobilize, in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. The struggle against imperialism must be an independent struggle waged by the working class, the youth, and the popular sectors. We must organize mobilization against the plunder and confront both U.S. imperialism and its sellout partners in Venezuela.

It is essential to recognize that the struggle against imperialist domination in Venezuela is part of the same international battle against wars, colonialism, and the plunder of the peoples. This is not a problem exclusive to Venezuela but one affecting all of Latin America, where imperialism seeks to recolonize the continent under the pretext of “national security” to serve its predatory interests.

Originally published at La Izquierda Diario on August 28, 2026.

The post Trump’s Plunder in Venezuela: Delcy Rodríguez Makes a Massive Oil Delivery to the United States appeared first on Left Voice.

From Left Voice via This RSS Feed.