By Mirko Casale – Sep 4, 2026At the end of August, in parallel, Donald Trump and Delcy Rodríguez announced an oil deal between the US and Venezuela. According to the US president, it was supposedly “the biggest oil deal in world history,” which was to be expected, coming from someone who rates his actions even when he comes out of the bathroom.The crude oil pact (or crude pact, depending on whom you ask) would apparently give the US majority stakes regarding the extraction of crude from 17 Venezuelan oil fields, with the potential to extract around 65 billion barrels. This amount is equivalent, approximately, to one-fifth of Venezuela’s proven reserves, which are, by the way, the largest on the planet.This information is, let us say, for the moment, the most solid and irrefutable that are known. However, others still generate some uncertainty. For example, while US. media talk about a deal for the duration of a century, the acting president of Venezuela, in her address on the matter, said that the deal would be for 25 years.Delcy Rodríguez set the goal of increasing production in these fields to 1.5 million barrels per day, which would require foreign investment—mainly from the United States—of about $100 billion. According to calculations by her government, this would bring more than $200 billion in revenue to the Venezuelan State, distributed over that future quarter-century of the agreement. That is to say, almost $20 per barrel extracted. Or, in other words, about $30 million a day, when that level of production is reached.The thing is that this level of production will not be reached tomorrow or the day after, but, according to various expert calculations, it would take almost a decade. For this, we need to assume—and it would be quite an assumption—that the investors would arrive on the numbers and times foreseen. It should also be taken into account that, of the 17 fields mentioned in the agreement, only half of them are currently active. The others are what is known in oil sector jargon as a “greenfield,” that is, a virgin area with zero infrastructure and practically everything to be done.As can be seen, the announcement, no matter how grandiloquent it sounds, is much more of an announcement than a tangible reality with an immediate effect. And, therefore, its consequences, whatever they may be, will not have a real impact soon or, in a global geopolitical situation as changing as the one we have been experiencing lately, they may have a lot less impact or may never have any impact. This must be kept in mind when analyzing the announcement.An unnecessarily extreme debateThe truth is, since January 3, 2026, very understandably, everything that happens or does not happen in Venezuela is scrutinized in detail both inside and outside the country. As for this oil agreement, we reiterate the importance of putting oneself in the other person’s shoes before pointing fingers or, conversely, before reacting to accusations.On one hand, US aggression and the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president left the country, from a military standpoint, at a crossroads: either launch a frontal armed resistance (without the capabilities, experience, or tradition of, for example, Iran), which would exact an immense bloody toll (the US need only bomb from afar to cause tens of thousands of military and civilian casualties without much effort or even setting foot in the country) with very slim chances of success; or submit, like someone with their hands tied and a gun to their head, waiting for a propitious moment to break free.Of course, submitting involves making painful (sometimes nauseating) concessions, and believe me, like many, I personally feel that pain (and the nausea) more often than I would like.For all this, obviously, this submission is not to the liking of many people, both inside and outside the country, but—I am speaking personally again—I would not be able to judge or criticize this submission without first setting an example and, I do not know, at least going to the nearest US embassy and slashing the tires of its diplomats’ vehicles, for example, to spread the spirit of resistance at the cost of facing whatever consequences.On the other hand, those who agree—even if it is because they see no alternative—with the strategy of submitting in the hope of better opportunities must understand that they will receive many more stones than flowers for it, particularly from friends or disappointed friends because the historical trajectory of the Bolivarian Revolution attracted people (inside and outside Venezuela) precisely because of its indomitable refusal to submit.It is logical that suspicions and accusations of all kinds arise; it would have been strange if they had not. And of course, it is unpleasant to hear all kinds of criticism—many of them extremely hurtful—but one must weather the storm and make the thankless effort to explain, as many times as necessary, one’s own position rather than responding to offenses with more offenses.These days, following the announcement of the agreement, the social media accounts of supporters, semi-supporters, and former supporters of Venezuela turned into a fratricidal boiling pot of insults, accusations, finger-pointing, airing dirty laundry, and other things that contribute nothing, except as entertainment for those who have always shown hostility toward the Bolivarian Revolution.Having said all this, and emphasizing once again that both positions are perfectly understandable (regarding this specific agreement and the Venezuelan path since the US aggression in general), this analysis, with a cool head and a heart at an acceptable pulse frequency (which is how geopolitics should be analyzed), aims to focus on aspects that, at times, seem to get lost in the social media war.Neither so good for the US nor so harmful for VenezuelaThe matter is, compared to other oil agreements existing in the world today or agreed to by Venezuela in the past, the recent agreement—for the moment only verbal—between Washington and Caracas is neither so wonderful for the one holding the gun nor so harmful for the one with the gun to the head.Yes, in the last years of Hugo Chávez’s rule, there was a much more beneficial oil framework for Venezuela’s interests, but in his early years in Miraflores, when he did not enjoy a favorable balance of power, he played by the rules imposed from the White House. President Nicolás Maduro never opposed US oil companies returning to work in Venezuelan territory (in fact, Chevron never stopped doing so) and worked for that goal, which implied the lifting of sanctions, progressively imposed since the time of Barack Obama.President Maduro’s kidnapping was a dirty and criminal move by Trump to ensure that this return would be on the most favorable terms for US oil companies. And on top of that, that goal is still very much up in the air. Let us not forget the long faces of several oil CEOs, Trump’s compatriots, when he sat them down to invite them to invest in Venezuela after the very US bipartisan system had sanctioned the country’s industry, leaving it hanging by a thread.That now Trump says that US reserves increased by 65 billion barrels overnight has the same value as when he says, as he has been saying daily since February, that he defeated Iran and controls the Strait of Hormuz: none.Venezuelan Oil and Trump’s Imaginary $20 Trillion in Foreign InvestmentA future yet to be writtenIf we look beyond, the announced agreement does not demonstrate the strength of the US president as much as, rather, his weakness. Since January, beyond grandiloquent announcements, Trump has not achieved any mega oil investment, let alone any mega extraction in Venezuela, which now produces less crude oil than in 2018 (when it was already under sanctions). Trump’s desperation now is to try to lower gasoline prices before the midterm elections in November, which have skyrocketed due to his other criminal adventure against Iran.His pompous announcement about Venezuela has had zero impact on the markets, first because that 100 billion investment has not appeared and second (and more importantly), because as was mentioned at the beginning, the effect of these agreements, if they ever come to be felt, will not be felt until about 7-8 years from now, by which time Trump will very likely be out of the White House and who knows, maybe even in a wooden coffin. Geopolitically speaking, it is in this weakness and desperation that the focus of the analysis should be in this case.History teaches us that liberation struggles are inevitably composed of advances and setbacks, and just as advances are not always synonymous with definitive victory, setbacks are not necessarily equivalent to defeat without any mitigating factors.For now, the so-called “biggest oil deal in world history” is nothing more than an announcement, and it will take years before it has any chance of becoming more than that. So anything can happen: it could be implemented later than expected, sooner, to a greater extent, to a lesser extent… or not implemented at all. What its most fervent detractors and its most passionate defenders say does not change that reality. Because the future is never written in advance, and this truth, which has always been true, is truer today than ever before. (RT)Translation: Orinoco TribuneOT/SC/SH