President Donald Trump’s Pentagon will buy into a Venezuelan billionaire’s oil company for a penny a share, the investors behind it may never be named, and the whole arrangement was designed to keep the next president from undoing it, according to the secret text of the administration’s “biggest oil deal in world history” obtained by ProPublica.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed the 18-page agreement, which is marked as a “sensitive” government document. A confidentiality clause even bars the company from disclosing its “existence and terms.” That company is North American Blue Energy Partners, run by Venezuelan oil baron Alejandro Betancourt, who has faced money laundering investigations in three countries but has never been charged.
The White House says the deal will help stabilize Venezuela’s economy and more than double U.S. oil reserves.
Here are seven of the most striking revelations from ProPublica’s reporting.
1. Washington’s stake costs a penny a share
The Pentagon will pay nothing upfront for its 35% stake, acquiring warrants at a penny a share that remain valid for 75 years. Trump has claimed the stake could be worth “hundreds of billions,” though Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee say they believe the Pentagon office lacks the legal authority to strike a deal with a foreign entity in a country under U.S. sanctions, a concern experts also raised to The Guardian.
2. The investors may never be named
Washington’s stake runs through a parent company registered in Barbados, where the law does almost nothing to force the people behind it into public view.
One person familiar with the deliberations told ProPublica that people close to the administration were drawn to Betancourt’s firm for its privacy and flexibility, which appeared to give it an edge over publicly traded oil giants bound by shareholder reporting rules.
“For example,” the person said, “Chevron couldn’t give 35% of their shares to the Pentagon.”
3. The deal is built to outlast Trump
People familiar with the negotiations told ProPublica the structure was designed to keep future leaders in Washington and Caracas from dismantling it.
The agreement installs a seven-member board for an initial 15 years, and a majority must be U.S. citizens. To boot, Venezuela’s government isn’t even guaranteed a seat.
Additionally, ousting Betancourt as CEO takes five votes, and any dispute between the company and Washington goes to federal court in the Northern District of Texas, which ProPublica noted Trump’s Justice Department has repeatedly turned to for favorable rulings.
4. Trump’s century-long promise doesn’t quite add up
Trump has said the deal secures American energy dominance for a century, but U.S. purchase rights expire after 50 years, and the operating rights appear to clash with Venezuela’s own law, which has a 25-year cap on oil concessions. A U.S. official told ProPublica that interim President Delcy Rodríguez granted the company 100-year concessions, but that figure appears nowhere in the agreement, and Venezuela’s own government has said the deal runs 25 years, The Guardian reported.
Venezuelan legal expert Jose Ignacio Hernández smacked down the administration’s claims.
“This is all just propaganda,” Hernández told The Guardian last month. “It cannot be implemented as announced by the administration.”
5. Cheap oil comes with a catch
The U.S. can buy 20% of the company’s oil at a discounted $30 a barrel, but ProPublica noted that price leaves out the potentially pricey blending products Venezuela’s thick crude needs to flow.
A company spokesperson insists much of its oil needs little or no blending.
Trump’s own officials reportedly told House Republicans in a closed-door briefing that the oil won’t reach U.S. markets soon. The text notably does not explicitly require the company to pay the $200 billion in royalties and taxes the White House promised Venezuela.
6. Undisclosed signer unmasked with ties to a federal criminal case
Orlando Alvarado, a longtime Betancourt executive whom the administration never disclosed as a party, signed for the parent company. The Miami Herald has reported that federal prosecutors named Alvarado an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged plot to embezzle from Venezuela’s state oil company. The company’s spokesperson noted neither man has been charged with a crime and called any claims against them baseless.
Betancourt himself has surfaced in the same orbit. In 2018, his cousin, a business partner also affiliated with Betancourt’s firm Derwick Associates, was charged in a $1.2 billion money laundering case in federal court in Miami. A federal agent’s affidavit cited an unnamed “conspirator 2,” who allegedly received hundreds of millions of dollars in laundered funds along with the cousin. The Herald later reported that “conspirator 2” was Betancourt, according to The Guardian.
Betancourt’s lawyer, Vel Freedman, pushed back in a letter to The Guardian.
“Mr Betancourt has never been charged with a crime in the United States. He has never been named as a defendant,” Freedman wrote. “The United States government has never sought his extradition, and the United States government has never publicly identified him as a target, as an unnamed co-conspirator, or as any numbered conspirator in any charging instrument.”
7. Rubio vouched for Betancourt after a federal probe was shut down
Rubio has defended Betancourt, saying a review with U.S. law enforcement found no investigations of him. However, CNN reported that Miami prosecutors shut down a probe into Betancourt on orders from then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and that Rubio helped make that happen. The Justice Department has called that claim about Blanche a fabrication.
Brian Naranjo, a former senior U.S. diplomat in Venezuela, told ProPublica what he thinks Betancourt really brings to the table.
“He is not really an oil man,” Naranjo said. “The talent he brings is that he’s a new person in a long line of Venezuelan business people who deal in influence. Their big lever is connections and influence. It is know-who, not know-how.”
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