Venezuela has agreed an oil deal with the US giving Washington unprecedented access to its oil reserves, casting doubt over its continued membership of OPEC
The US has recently signed an unprecedented deal with Venezuela which would give it access to a fifth of the country’s oil reserves.
The deal grants a 100-year lease to a new private company jointly owned by the US and North American Blue Energy Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), which is controlled by controversial Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, for 17 Venezuelan oil fields containing 65 billion barrels of reserves.
The US Defence Department’s Office of Strategic Capital will have a 35% stake in the new company, while the US will control 55% of the output produced by the private equity.
The US business magazine Fortune has said that the deal “harkens back to a century-old era of colonialism and backroom dealmaking” while Harvard professor and former Venezuelan planning minister Ricardo Hausmann has called it a “shameful deal”.
Following his ouster and capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January 2026, US President Donald Trump has boasted that the country is now the 51st US state and that the US controls its oil.
There has been speculation following the deal that Venezuela could leave the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), an organisation which it was instrumental in founding.
Last week Bloomberg cited “people familiar with the matter” as saying that Venezuela was seriously considering whether to quit OPEC, saying that this would allow US and international oil companies “to play a larger role in helping rebuild the nation’s oil industry”.
However when questioned about this, US President Donald Trump said it was Venezuela’s decision whether to remain a member of OPEC or not.
"Well, I don't know. That's up to them. I mean, that's going to be up to them," Trump told reporters on Monday.
**The symbolism of a Venezuelan decision to leave **
Venezuela was the country which first came up with the idea of OPEC, proposing to Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in 1949 that oil exporting countries should coordinate and communicate.
OPEC however was not established until 1960. Until that time the oil market had been dominated by a group of British and American firms known as “The Seven Sisters”. They owned the rights to most of the oil in the Gulf and could set prices at will.
OPEC, often derided as a “cartel”, transferred power in the oil market from these companies to governments of oil-producing nations, some of which had only recently won independence.
However, the US oil deal with Venezuela transfers control of the country’s oil resources to a foreign-owned firm controlled by in part by the US government.
Speaking to Fortune, Eurasia Group energy analyst Gregory Brew said that the deal was “colonial” and “extremely unusual”, comparing it to the pre-OPEC days when British Petroleum controlled most of Iraq’s and Iran’s oil resources.
Whether Venezuela remains formally a member of OPEC or not, its deal with the US has brought back the very phenomenon that OPEC was formed to counter.
How will a Venezuelan departure affect OPEC?
If Venezuela does leave OPEC it would not be the first country to do so. The UAE left the organisation earlier this year following tensions with Saudi Arabia over Yemen while Indonesia, Angola, and Ecuador left in previous years.
Amid US sanctions and political instability, Venezuela’s oil output had declined for years under Maduro’s presidency and by 2026 it was producing 1.16 million barrels a day - less than half the amount it did 10 years before.
Venezuela’s low production meant that it was exempt from OPEC production quotas and a departure will have little effect on OPEC’s share of the global market.
However, a Venezuelan departure would have much greater symbolic weight, because of its role in the foundation of OPEC, casting doubt on the organisation’s cohesion and ability to hold together.
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