Read our editorial on opposing war with Venezuela here, and a feature article on the history of US imperialism in Venezuela here.
The Trump administration and Venezuelan sell-out leader Delcy Rodríguez announced an agreement on August 28 conceding much of the oppressed nation’s oil reserves to US imperialism.
The deal stipulates that 17 “strategic” Venezuelan oil fields, amounting to 65 billion barrels, or one-fifth of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, will fall under US-majority control. Under the agreement, the oil fields have been leased for 100 years to North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), the second-largest private oil company in Venezuela.
The agreement also gives the US, through the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Development, a 35% stake in NABEP. Under the deal, US imperialism has rights to purchase 20% of NABEP’s yearly oil output at production cost, with the ability to buy the rest at its discretion. According to US and Venezuelan officials, the agreement will inject $100 billion of investment to tap the massive oil reserves granted to the US.
The deal sets a production target of 1.5 million barrels per day, up from the current rate of 1.2 million barrels per day.
President Delcy Rodríguez issued a press release lauding the deal as “a historic milestone (…) Venezuela is thus ushering in a new era of recovery, growth, production, security, and prosperity for our people.” She claimed the agreement—which even monopoly media commentators in BBC and Fortune have said is selling out the country—would generate $209 billion in tax revenue.
US imperialism has stolen the revenue from Venezuela’s oil sales, releasing it as it wishes, since its invasion and kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores on January 3.
Trump’s own announcement demagogically promised that the oil deal would lower oil and gasoline costs for Americans before the upcoming midterms electoral farce, with the White House continuing that the plundered oil would “provide supply for military and other sensitive uses.”
Some of the fields seized by the US had been operated by Chinese social-imperialism during Maduro’s administration.
Protesters marched through the streets of Caracas in late August in opposition to the agreement. Protesters also demanded the release of President Maduro and First Lady Flores.
The mobilization was organized by the Popular Anti-Imperialist League, the group that in July protested against the deployment of US and Israeli personnel to Venezuela under the cover of earthquake relief.
Organizer Orlando Vega said of the group, “Our call is for the people to organize pockets of resistance against imperialism and Zionism.”
Control of Venezuela’s oil resources is one aspect of US imperialism’s strategy in Latin America: to consolidate US domination of Latin America to secure its status as the world’s sole-hegemonic superpower, in collusion and contention with the other imperialist powers, and to drown in blood the Latin American peoples’ struggles.
Image: The flag of Venezuela. Credit: Andreas Lehner.
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