On the evening of August 28, President Trump announced on Truth Social what he called the biggest oil deal in world history, a sweeping agreement handing a new United States linked venture majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, structured as 100 year development rights across 17 fields in the Orinoco Belt and Lake Maracaibo. The framing that traveled with it was explicit, that the transaction more than doubles American oil reserves and will substantially lower gas prices for all Americans long into the future. Headlines took the reserve number at face value, which is the mistake, because that number hides two separate problems. The first is flow. A barrel counted as a reserve is not a barrel at a refinery, and in Venezuela the two are decades apart. The second is the reserve number itself. The 65 billion, and the 300 billion it comes from, was never independently proven, and it does not hold up once you look at how the figure was built.

Renegade Resources

Venezuela: The Reserve Illusion

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