Venezuela to hand over up to 50 million barrels of oil to US; Trump to oversee use of proceeds

Venezuela will hand over 30 to 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to the United States, which will sell it at market prices. US President Donald Trump announced this on his social network Truth Social on Tuesday, saying he would personally oversee how the proceeds are used. He wants to ensure that the people of both countries—Venezuela and the United States—benefit from them.

Venezuelan oil sells for less than, for example, US light crude West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the main benchmark for oil prices in the Americas. Bloomberg reported that the oil Trump referred to could be worth up to 2.8 billion dollars (about 58 billion Kč). One barrel is 159 litres.

Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves, but decades of neglected investment under President Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez have left it producing far less than it did in the 1970s to 1990s. At the time, it produced up to 3.5 million barrels a day; estimates for last year put production at around 900,000 barrels a day. The country would therefore need roughly 30 to 50 days to produce 30 to 50 million barrels of oil, disregarding the impact of the US blockade.

Experts say Venezuela's oil sector will not be able to increase production quickly or substantially, so to meet Trump's demand, the regime would probably have to cut sales to China, according to the newspaper El País. In early January, about 12 ships carrying at least 12 million barrels of oil and petroleum products left Venezuelan ports for China. The tankers sailed in so-called dark mode, meaning their transponders were switched off to prevent their location and movements across the oceans from being tracked. Caracas is thereby circumventing US sanctions.

Trump said the oil would be of high quality.