US Pursues Stake in 90 Billion Venezuelan Barrels via Pentagon-Betancourt Partnership
Updated
Updated · Bloomberg · Aug 28
US Pursues Stake in 90 Billion Venezuelan Barrels via Pentagon-Betancourt Partnership
3 articles · Updated · Bloomberg · Aug 28
Summary
A potential partnership between the Pentagon and investor Alejandro Betancourt has emerged as the latest channel for Washington to secure a major stake in Venezuelan oil reserves.
Betancourt has become a key intermediary between the two countries, giving the US government a possible route into fields it has been seeking to control directly.
The broader plan under discussion targets about a third of Venezuela's oil fields — 17 fields holding roughly 90 billion barrels of proven crude — and would require billions of dollars plus security support.
That push marks a wider US energy-policy shift driven by depleted strategic reserves and high energy prices, though any deal still faces Venezuelan political resistance, legal changes and congressional scrutiny.
With $180 billion needed to revive Venezuela's ruined oilfields, who will shoulder the massive financial risk of this unprecedented U.S. energy takeover?
Could Washington's bold push for direct ownership in Venezuelan oil trigger a new era of resource mercantilism rather than securing global energy supplies?
If past expropriations still haunt investors, what hidden guarantees are driving international oil giants back into the world's most capital-intensive crude reserves?