Owner of the largest oil reserves in the world, Venezuela has been experiencing a recovery in its energy industry. After years under sanctions from the United States, it was precisely through agreements with the North American country that production in the country went from around 900 thousand barrels per day in January to more than 1.2 million in June, the highest number since 2019.
Now, after the agreement signed between Caracas and Washington, the country projects even greater growth. This is because the pact signed by the governments of Delcy Rodríguez and Donald Trump allowed foreign companies access to the exploration of oil reserves estimated at 65 billion barrels.
However, there is a legal obstacle that establishes a financial lock on the country’s revenues: Executive Order 14373.
The measure, decreed by the US Treasury Department on January 9, 2026 under the justification of “safeguarding the assets and stability of the region”, determines that all funds from the Venezuelan government and its agencies, such as the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), derived from the sale of natural resources or diluents, are retained in accounts held by Washington, being transferred to the Venezuelan government after special authorization or license.
The order was imposed by the US government just six days after the military aggression against Caracas, on January 3, 2026, which resulted in the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.
What’s the problem?
The advance in trade normalization with the USA under such conditions worries Venezuelan experts interviewed by the Brazil in fact. For economist specialized in oil Carlos Mendoza Potella, a strategic partnership with the United States under current conditions “practically means free access for international capital to use the oil table and the mining table, establishing its own conditions”.
Potellá recalls that, shortly after the US bombing of Venezuela, Trump received executives from oil companies at the White House, from whom he heard complaints about the “absence of legal security” for investments in the Venezuelan oil sector.
“They wanted to have clarity and security to enter with legal guarantees, as Exxon Mobil asked Trump in his first intervention there at the Capitol, at the White House, where he said: ‘Well, now we can enter, but what security do we have?’ Trump is doing this, defining precisely the terms of security that international oil corporations need”, he assesses.
At a conference held by the Center for Studies for Socialist Democracy (Cedes) at the end of August, award-winning Venezuelan writer Luis Britto Garcia also expressed concern about trade relations between the countries and classified the pact signed by Delcy and Trump as “the worst oil agreement in history”.
“Effectively, in Executive Order 14373, it is recognized that these assets deposited there are the property of Venezuela, but Venezuela cannot use, enjoy or dispose of them. […] If you can’t use, enjoy or dispose of something, it’s because you don’t own it”, pointed out the writer.
Britto García also cited a report published by the British newspaper Financial Timesin which the magazine details that the United States government would not have transferred the resources from the sale of Venezuelan oil in the first half of 2026, which would have reached US$13 billion (around R$66 billion).
The British newspaper’s report, published on July 22nd with the title ”The US has collected about $13bn of Venezuela’s oil money. Where is it?” (The United States collected around US$13 billion of Venezuela’s oil money. Where is this money? — in free translation), states that Washington presented contradictory versions about the destination of the resources, but that the president of the United States himself had stated that “the US was ‘making a lot of money’ with Venezuelan oil” and that the revenues “would be controlled by him”.
The report also mentions that senior US government officials and Democratic and Republican parliamentarians told the publication on condition of anonymity that Trump uses the resources “to exert pressure on Rodríguez”, as a type of “blackmail”.
What does the Venezuelan government say?
Since the beginning of the year, when Caracas and Wahsington began this close relationship after the January 3rd attacks, the Venezuelan government has reinforced that contacts take place within the framework of free negotiations between two sovereign states.
“We have addressed a bilateral work agenda for the benefit of our two countries,” Rodríguez said on January 14, after the first public contact between her and Trump after Maduro’s kidnapping. Still in January, the president announced the creation of two funds, the Sovereign Social Protection Fund and the Sovereign Infrastructure Fund, to which all resources from new oil sales would be allocated.
The idea, according to the interim president, was “to improve workers’ salaries, so that the currency goes directly to hospitals, schools, food and housing”.
At the end of January, Venezuela approved a reform to the Hydrocarbons Law, which reduced from 30% to 15% the minimum royalties paid to the Venezuelan State by private companies due to oil exploration and removed the obligation for the state company PDVSA to participate in private ventures. The new law also provides that any disputes related to the sector may be resolved in international arbitration.
Back in March, when the Republican praised Delcy and said, without specifying, that the oil “was starting to flow”, the interim president thanked the far-right leader for his willingness to work for “binational cooperation”.
The earthquakes that struck the country in June and left more than 6,000 people dead, however, affected the government’s discourse in relation to oil resources. On July 8, Rodríguez promised to link oil revenues to the country’s reconstruction plan. “A Venezuelan energy power is our objective, and here there will also be resources for the recovery and reconstruction of our homeland after the double seismic shock of June 24th,” he said.
In August, with the signing of the oil agreement, the Venezuelan government signed the document. During a press conference on the occasion of the visit of Donald Trump’s Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, at the end of August, Rodríguez emphasized that the economic benefits will be felt quickly by the population through the creation of new jobs.
“With every job that is created, and this will be very fast, I will be responding to Venezuela about the benefits that this brings to our country,” he declared. “Where today there is a large savannah without any type of development, there we will see roads, electricity, water and infrastructure”, he promised, also stating that he is working with the United States government so that sanctions against the country are eliminated.
“We continue to work with the authorities so that the sanctions system can be definitively lifted and the Venezuelan economy, Venezuela’s social development, can occur without any difficulty,” he said.
Launched in January, a website created by the Venezuelan government serves to track the resources that enter the two sovereign wealth funds, but, so far, there is only one record of a transfer worth US$300 million, carried out on March 13th.
O Brazil in fact contacted the Venezuelan Executive asking about the current impacts of Executive Order 14373, the levels of inflows to the National Treasury and the prospects for changes in relations, as well as the lack of updating of new records on the website dedicated to resource transparency, but did not receive a response until the publication of this report.
Venezuelan government sources say there is an expectation that Executive Order 14373 will be suspended, as well as most of the economic sanctions that still weigh on the country’s economy.
Source: www.brasildefato.com.br
