The Latest: Trump says Venezuela agreed to give US control of 65 billion barrels of oil reserves
President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration has entered a sweeping agreement with Venezuela that, if realized, could give the U.S. access to vast amounts of the South American country’s untapped oil reserves, at cost. The president is calling it “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!”
The United Arab Emirates’ air force intercepted an Iranian drone over its territorial waters Monday, the Defense Ministry said, an attack that comes after the United States and Iran exchanged fire on the weekend, the first significant military action in a month.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford answered Trump’s “Lake America” decree Saturday with a billboard-sized message on the Canadian shoreline — “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” — as Canadian leaders met the move with ridicule rather than outrage.
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“Venezuelans will not respect this illegitimate deal and no major US oil company will take it seriously because they know it will not last,” Ricardo Hausmann, now a Harvard University professor, said on social media. He said Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president, “has no legitimacy or constitutional power to commit Venezuela to any such deal.”
“One thing must be absolutely clear: Venezuela retains ownership and sovereignty over its resources,” Rodríguez said in her national address. She said the goal is to reach other agreements with transnational private companies such as Chevron, Repsol and Shell.
She added: “We want to be an energy powerhouse, a major oil producer, a significant gas exporter, and a major national petrochemical developer.”
It goes against what they’ve been told for decades: Venezuelan resources are for Venezuela, and no leader would cede control of those resources to the U.S. government.
At a market in eastern Caracas, Douglas Borjas said he’s upset that Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodriguez apparently agreed to 55% U.S. control of oil fields that could produce 65 billion barrels.
“I think they’re doing it to cling to power,” Borjas said. “The Venezuelan people deserve better. Venezuela has resources that can be exploited, but for the benefit of the people, not for the benefit of the corrupt elite.”
The bond market is one of the few forces in the world strong enough to get politicians to snap to attention. It also helps dictate how much ordinary people have to pay on their mortgages and car loans, as well as how much they earn from their savings accounts and 401(k) plans.
Rising bond yields raise the specter of higher borrowing costs putting the brakes on consumer spending, the lifeblood of the economy, and raise concerns that investors might sour on financing vast government borrowing.
Traders are reacting to the speech Friday by Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh about lowering inflation despite possible short-term pain for the economy.
In the bond market, the yield on the two-year Treasury, which closely tracks expectations about Fed moves, jumped to 4.35% from 4.22% just before Warsh’s speech at an economic symposium. That sets up a potential clash with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has consistently lobbied for lower rates.
Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 3.4% to $91.10 per barrel on Monday. U.S. benchmark crude oil was trading 3.6% higher at $86.40 per barrel.
That has created its own form of economic pressures globally, including in the U.S.
The national average for gasoline in August has been above $4 per gallon every day in August for the first time ever, according to the AAA. It has been the most expensive August at the pump on record, outpacing even the enormous supply chain crunch during the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2022.
U.S. markets are sliding after American forces struck Iranian rocket launchers in the Strait of Hormuz, the first military action in a month.
The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both declined 0.2% on Monday. Nasdaq futures slipped 0.1%.
Meanwhile oil prices surged more than 3% after the U.S. strike on Sunday broke a lull in fighting in a war that has lasted more than six months. The Trump administration has announced new economic campaign against Iran, but there is a significant risk of escalation in fighting.
“The Middle East had finally gone quiet enough for oil traders to start sanding some of the war premium out of crude,” wrote Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management. “Then Sunday arrived, with a reminder that quiet in the Strait of Hormuz is not the same as peace.”
The United Arab Emirates’ air force intercepted an Iranian drone over its territorial waters Monday, the Defense Ministry said, an attack that comes after the United States and Iran exchanged fire on the weekend, the first significant military action in a month.
During the lull in fighting, the U.S. has been ratcheting up economic pressure on Iran with the hope of forcing concessions out of Tehran, including reopening the vital Strait of Hormuz to shipping.
After the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, Iran established a chokehold on the strait, though which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passed in peacetime, slowing ship traffic to a trickle.
As the fighting resumed, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, climbed above $90, up about 25% from the start of the war, presenting a growing problem for Trump ahead of the midterm elections.
Trump has frequently suggested he wants to seek a third term, posting about mounting another campaign, donning 2028 caps and discussing ways to make it happen — even as he’s acknowledged the Constitution prohibits it.
But lately, Trump has begun showing signs that even he doesn’t really believe another run will happen.
During recent speeches, the Republican president has begun describing life after the White House when his term ends in January 2029, predicting he’ll be at home and agonizing as his successor claims credit for his accomplishments.
“Your next president is going to say, ‘What a great job I did,’” Trump told an event on Long Island, New York, this month. “He’ll be sitting around, watching television. A real stiff. Unless you vote Republican, of course.”
A sitting president talking about becoming a former one is always politically fraught. But with midterm elections now just nine weeks away, Trump is approaching the point of his presidency where there will be more and more reminders that his power will soon wane.
A former White House teleprompter operator accused of using inside knowledge to make bets on the prediction market Kalshi has been ordered to turn over more than $100,000 in profits and pay a $65,000 fine as part of a settlement with federal authorities.
The settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, announced Friday, also dealt Gabriel Perez a three-year trading ban. Perez was placed on unpaid leave from his job at the White House after reports emerged that he used his position to make bets on what President Donald Trump would say in speeches.
The White House did not immediately comment on the settlement. A White House official said in July that Perez was no longer in his position but did not say if he had been fired or resigned.
The commission found that Perez made $107,500 on prediction markets by betting on words and phrases that would appear in Trump’s speeches between December 2025 and February 2026.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford answered Trump’s “Lake America” decree Saturday with a billboard-sized message on the Canadian shoreline — “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” — as Canadian leaders met the move with ridicule rather than outrage.
The display followed Trump’s executive order directing U.S. federal agencies to call Lake Ontario “Lake America.” After months of tariffs, threats to make Canada the 51st U.S. state and personal attacks on its leaders, the reaction in Canada has mixed defiance with mockery.
Ford said Trump was trying to rename the lake because Ontario and Canada were “standing up for ourselves” and argued the name would outlast the president.
“Long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,” Ford said in a video posted on social media.
Besides a social media post from Trump, the White House has said little about what he is calling “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” in Venezuela.
Trump said the agreement announced Friday night would give the United States a stake in Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, a step toward his goal of extracting energy from the country after American forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro in a middle-of-the-night raid in January and brought him to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges.
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, described the deal as a step toward economic recovery that will modernize the country’s oil industry.
Earlier on Saturday, she said the oil reserves would “cease to be an inert, cold statistic and will instead become concrete solutions. Housing is one of them.”
But the answers to many questions, including how soon the reserves could be drilled and who will pay to make it happen, were not immediately clear. No text of any agreement has been released.
President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration has entered a sweeping agreement with Venezuela that, if realized, could give the U.S. access to vast amounts of the South American country’s untapped oil reserves, at cost.
Trump in a social media post announcing the agreement, said it was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez.
Rodríguez’s government in a statement said the deal involves the development of 17 fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels. It said the agreement could draw $100 billion in investment into Venezuela’s oil industry and yield over $209 billion in taxes for Caracas.
Rodríguez in a posting on Telegram predicted the deal “will have a significant impact on our nation’s revival.”
The agreement allows for the United States to partner with an unnamed private operator in Venezuela to create a new private company to take hold of the reserves, according to a U.S. official familiar with the contours of the deal.
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