In Reply to: We have a winner in the Iran War posted by mh on October 30, 2026 at 13:49:31
President Donald Trump called it the biggest oil deal in history: 17 Venezuelan oilfields holding some 64 billion barrels of reserves, handed to a single company.
Delivering on it falls to North American Blue Energy Partners, a little-known firm led by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, who was until recently a target of US money-laundering investigations involving funds embezzled from the state-owned oil company PDVSA. The company's deal with Washington grants the US a 35%-stake in its corporate parent and the right to buy 20% of output at production cost.
NABEP says it will lift oil output fourfold to more than 1 million barrels per day (bpd), up from about 224,000 bpd in mid-October.
That will be far harder than Trump and NABEP have suggested, according to Reuters interviews with 15 oil workers, contractors, financiers and industry experts. Eight of them — seven oilfield workers and contractors and one business associate familiar with NABEP operations — said the company was carrying debt to contractors and struggling to hire staff and repair infrastructure.
Even the headline reserves figures Trump cites may overstate the prize.
Only about 10 billion barrels can realistically be developed within the 25-year term Venezuelan law allows for oil projects, Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University's Baker Institute, told Reuters. "And only if everything aligns," he said.
Terry Wade, a spokesperson for NABEP, told Reuters the company was on track. "We're at the leading edge of a Venezuelan oil industry renaissance," he said.
NABEP faces a steep set of challenges, the industry players said. The company must secure capital; compete for rigs, equipment and power plants; execute a long list of repairs to dilapidated infrastructure; and rapidly increase its workforce in a country that has seen a decades-long exodus of trained staff.
Former Venezuelan energy minister Humberto Calderon Berti told a conference in September he was convinced "the agreement will not last long," citing the company's lack of technical qualifications and short track record.