In a social media post on Sunday, President Trump said he would use the oil from his deal in Venezuela to refill the United States’ stockpile of oil, but that’s something of a pipe dream — at least in the short term.
The agreement, announced last week, covers some 65 billion barrels of reserves in the oil-rich country, and amounts to a highly unusual foray involving a partnership with a private company. But many of its details remain unknown, and that’s just one complication for a process that Mr. Trump said would “begin very shortly.”
For one, the world is short on oil because of the war with Iran, and the United States has been withdrawing oil from its inventory for months to keep prices from rising even higher. That stockpile, called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, now sits at its lowest level since 1982.
New projects can take years to get off the ground and produce meaningful amounts of oil. That is especially true in Venezuela, where much of the energy infrastructure is in disrepair after years of mismanagement and corruption.
And any decision to buy oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would require approval, including from Congress, which would have to authorize the spending.
Venezuela has vast oil reserves, and the portion covered by the agreement is almost as much as all of the proven reserves in the United States, the world’s biggest oil producer. To tap into the Venezuelan reserves, the United States plans to collaborate with an influential and polarizing Venezuelan businessman, Alejandro Betancourt López. Mr. Betancourt’s family controls Venezuela’s second-largest private oil producer, North American Blue Energy Partners.
The deal is also proving divisive among Venezuelans, who have long considered their national resources a birthright. So far, Mr. Trump’s ouster in January of their autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, has done little to change the country — his successor, Delcy Rodríguez, remains in power, while millions of everyday Venezuelans remain in poverty, electricity blackouts continue to plague the nation, and no date has been set for an election.
Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting.
