America’s Greatest Show On Earth — Counted In Barrels Of Venezuelan Crude

There are oil deals, and then there are mega-oil deals. We’ve seen many examples of mega-deals in the past: Exxon buying Mobil and Chevron gobbling up Texaco in the late 1990s; more recently, Oxy’s buyout of Anadarko Petroleum and ExxonMobil’s purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources would qualify.

And then, there are oil deals that are so enormous they boggle the mind. The deal jointly announced by U.S. President Donald Trump and Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez late Friday stands alone as that magnitude of oil deal. As President Trump might say, there’s never been anything like it – many people are saying it.

It’s the greatest show on earth counted in barrels of Venezuelan crude — 65 billion barrels of proven reserves in 17 separate oil fields, to be exact. That’s the volume in which the U.S. now takes an ownership interest, more than doubling the size of America’s current proven oil reserves.

The implications boggle the mind. Voters in 2024 said they wanted a change in direction of U.S. energy policy and boy did they get it. Twenty months into the second Trump presidency, the climate alarm-driven policies of both Joe Biden and Barack Obama have essentially disappeared. The liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry is booming and rapidly expanding. Offshore wind is going out of business. New nuclear installations on federal properties are being sped into production. Even a handful of new coal plants have been permitted for construction.

U.S. oil production from shale has continued rising despite a decade of grim predictions that all the prime drilling spots had been developed and production had peaked. America is already far and away the largest oil producing nation – adding 65 billion barrels to the national portfolio only cements that position into place for the foreseeable future.

Talk of getting to the impossible net zero by 2050 goal set by the Biden autopen presidency has all but disappeared from the political landscape. Few Democrats bring it up in their stump speeches. Some avoid even taking questions on the topic.

The Green New Deal rolled out in 2019 by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez seems a distant bad dream now, relegated to the dustbin of history as so many knew it would be. Look it up: According to the EIA, the U.S. produced 11.6 million barrels per day in February 2019 when AOC rolled out her genius $90 trillion plan. In May 2026, the number had risen by more than 2 million bpd.

Friday’s announced deal comes amid reports that Venezuela could be about to revoke its membership in the OPEC cartel. As I wrote here recently, OPEC has already lost most of its former influence over global crude prices. The loss of Venezuela, coming on the heels of the UAE ending its longtime membership, would present an existential threat to the cartel’s ongoing existence.

This all comes as both Chevron and Halliburton prepare to announce big Venezuela-related deals of their own as soon as next week amid the rapidly improving security and legal situation in the South American country. The arrangement announced Friday, now involving 55% U.S. ownership in these giant oil fields in joint operation with a yet-to-be-named private company should help speed further improvement in the situation on the ground there, which was in shambles in January, when Nicolas Maduro was deposed from power.