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https://abc7.com/post/venezuela-eart...akes/19396632/68,900 people are reported missing in Venezuela.
https://abc7.com/post/venezuela-eart...akes/19396632/68,900 people are reported missing in Venezuela.
ongoing US war crime
https://apnews.com/article/cuba-blac...9dd1dc859d6dd5An islandwide blackout hit Cuba on Monday as the country’s fuel reserves dwindle and its electric grid continues to crumble.
The blackout in the country of nearly 10 million people was reported by the state-run Electric Union, which said on X that the cause is under investigation. The Ministry of Energy and Mines wrote on X that it has activated protocols to restore electricity.
Fuel has been running out across Cuba since January, when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to the island, deepening the island’s ongoing economic and financial crisis. Public transportation has largely been halted, and officials have canceled tens of thousands of surgeries.
Donroe Doctrine goes live
one could call it imperialism or neocolonialism, but it's just robbery
NYT and the Trump administration are insane
The US blockade of Cuba is a grotesque war crime
Trump administration refuses to show their sums
At first, the money went into a mysterious account in Qatar. Rubio told Congress on January 28 that there was a "short-term mechanism" for the Venezuelan government to "submit every month a budget of this is what we need funded." A week later, Bessent stammered and refused to answer while Rep. Sean Casten (D–Ill.) asked him what legal authority the Treasury was exercising or what written agreements were in place.
On February 13, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced that the Qatari account was being closed after $500 million had passed through it. "Since Venezuela has so many creditors and they owe a lot of money, we had some risk if we put it into a U.S. bank account set up quickly that creditors could freeze that money," he told NBC News. But now the administration was ready to move the money through a Citibank account controlled by the Treasury.
The new Citibank account had slightly more checks and balances, in theory. Both the U.S. State Department and the Venezuelan government announced in April that they had hired outside auditors, and Rubio told Congressin June that it would be "an ongoing audit, so it's not a once-a-year audit, it's on every expenditure, every single disbursement is audited." The Venezuelan government also created a website calledTransparent Sovereignty to publish oil transactions.
But as far as the public is concerned, it is still a big mystery. The State Department hasnot publishedeither the written agreements or the results of the audits. Transparent Sovereignty only lists one transaction, a $300 million fuel oil sale from March 2026. The estimated last month that Venezuela had sold more than $13 billion in oil under the new arrangement. Asked about the report, Trumpbragged that it was "even more than that."
The administration simply hasn't forked over all the information it promised. Despite promising in April to produce quarterly audit reports, the Trump administration hasn't sent anything to Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the the Financial Times rreported on July 22. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee wrote another letter on Wednesday demanding information. Even hawkish Republicans who supported the operation have started to get uneasy about the lack of transparency on the money.
"We have never seen those [audit] reports…It's been six months. I would like to see two reports, because it's every three months," Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R–Fla.) said during a July hearing. In response, Assistant Secretary of State Caleb Orr promised to give Congress "appropriate summaries" that would "protect relevant information that's part of our foreign policy." In other words, the fate of that money is a state secret.
https://reason.com/2026/08/07/trump-says-he-took-venezuelas-oil-heres-what-actually-happened/
Venezuela is exporting about half of its oil output to the United States, according to a senior US official, seven months after Washington abducted President Nicolas Maduro and installed an interim government in Caracas.https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/...half-of-outputUS Secretary of State Marco Rubio later told the US Congress that the funds from Venezuelan oil sales “will be deposited into an account that we will have oversight over”. He added that Caracas would submit a monthly budget request against the account, with Washington specifying up front what the funds could not be used for.
The Financial Times reported in July that the US has collected more than $13bn in revenue from Venezuelan oil sales this year.
Responding to that report on July 27, Trump said the actual figure was higher.
But his administration has said almost nothing about what has happened to the money.
In April, a State Department official told Congress that the department had authorised the disbursement of about $3bn to Venezuela.
The Council on Foreign Relations, an independent think tank, said in June that while the administration has repeatedly framed its control of Venezuelan oil exports as benefitting both countries, “it has not publicly disclosed how much oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds”. It said the opacity extends to Venezuelan gold and other mineral exports Washington also controls.
The think tank also expressed concern over the Trump administration’s decision to exclude Venezuela’s opposition and civil society from discussions with the interim government in Caracas over the country’s future.
That government is led by Maduro’s vice president, Decly Rodriguez.
“Without accountability mechanisms or a clear democratic roadmap, the United States risks entrenching a corrupt successor regime,” it added.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/28/trum...-reserves.htmlTrump announces deal with Venezuela to secure more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves
The U.S. struck a deal with Venezuela to get majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves as the war with Iran roils the global crude trade, President Donald Trump announced Friday.
Trump said in an evening social media post that the agreement — which he touted as “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” — comes “at no cost to” U.S. taxpayers.
The agreement more than doubles the U.S. oil reserve, according to Trump. Department of Energy data released earlier this month showed oil volumes in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve hit lows not seen since the 1980s.
Trump’s deal with Venezuela follows the U.S.′ January attack on the South American country. Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s then-president, and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured during the strike.
In his social media post, Trump said U.S. officials coordinated with government leaders in Venezuela. They also utilized a “partnership” with unnamed private businesses to secure the deal, he said.
“This Transaction will greatly strengthen the already growing relationship between Venezuela and the United States,” Trump wrote in the post.
...
https://apnews.com/article/trump-ven...7f690c3368020eThe agreement allows for the United States to partner with an unnamed private operator in Venezuela to create a new private company to take hold of the reserves, according to a U.S. official familiar with the contours of the deal.
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, added that Rodríguez granted the company 100-year rights to develop the oil fields.
The deal gives the United States 55% effective output of the new private company -- including an ownership stake and rights to buy oil at cost. The company would be the second largest corporate holder of proven reserves after Saudi Aramco, according to the official.
Last edited by Winehole23; 08-29-2026 at 07:44 AM.
a bit pie in the sky
sounds like a great vehicle for corruption
•US gov’t owns 55% of joint venture en y; wanted money launderer Alejandro Betancourt’s group controls 45%
•venture has 100-year lease for 17 remote, undeveloped oil reserves
•US pledges investment $$$$
•Venezuelan experts say deal violates VZ cons ution, is voidable
step 1: entrench a socialist dictator
step 2: steal their oil
step 3: imperial quagmire in South America
"Trump announces deal with Venezuela to secure more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves"
CROFL still using Maduro's made up reserve numbers.
Also, this kind of deal is what helped radicalize Iran against the US.
Also, socialism good now.
"evil communists are supplying Cuba with food and energy -- we must starve them"
ruling and opposition parties in Venezuela don't like the deal
While Trump called it the “biggest oil deal in world history”, Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodríguez said it would create investment in the country of more than $100bn.
The two governments have made few details available about how the arrangement would actually work and have yet to explain where the new investment would come from. It is also unclear what role PDVSA, Venezuela’s sanctioned state-owned oil company, would play.
Juan Pablo Guanipá, one of the most prominent members of the opposition who is currently in Venezuela, said that foreign investment was vital to revive the country’s oil industry following years of mismanagement and that the deal had some “potential” to help boost activity.
But, referring to the Rodríguez government, he added that “as long as we have the same people who destroyed the country and PDVSA [the state-owned oil company] handling the money that comes from this agreement, we are building a skyscraper on clay”.
Henrique Capriles, a lawmaker who leads a moderate opposition faction in Venezuela, said there were many doubts about the agreement because of the “opacity and corruption” of the government.
“Those who destroyed PDVSA are the same ones who remain in power and who are not going to rebuild anything,” he said on X. He said the government needed to explain the legal basis for the agreement under the Cons ution and what the Venezuelan people were going to receive from it.
On Saturday, leftwing groups took to the streets of Caracas to reject the “guardianship” of Venezuela by the US, with many holding signs saying “Yankees out of Venezuela”.
“They [the US] attacked the Venezuelan homeland on January 3 and today they are trying to subjugate us,” said Fernando Berroterán, a member of the Popular Anti-imperialist Front.Henry Rodríguez, a former member of the ruling United Socialist party, said: “The interim president does not have the right or the legal power to do what she has done.”https://www.ft.com/content/b3c98ca2-...syn-25a6b1a6=1Some of the strongest criticisms came from figures associated with the Chavismo political movement, which has been in power in Venezuela since the late revolutionary socialist Hugo Chávez took office in 1999.
Rafael Ramírez, who was president of PDVSA from 2004 to 2014, and energy minister from 2002 to 2014, said that the deal reached with Washington represented “the greatest looting in our country’s history”.“It signals the end of PDVSA,” said Ramírez, who broke with Maduro in 2017 and now lives in Europe. “Now it’ll just be a contract administrator.”
WSJ op-ed page
There are drawbacks to running a low-trust, criminal regime. Eventually, the press calls a duck a duck.
technical constraints on topping up the SPR with Venezuelan Orinoco Belt extra-heavy sour crude
it's a political hedge for Iran closing Hormuz again
https://discoveryalert.com/analysis/...e-august-2026/Scaling production further faces steep investment requirements:
- Current level (1.1-1.25 million barrels per day): Already straining existing infrastructure, diluent supply, and power systems. No meaningful surplus for SPR diversion at this output.
- 2026 target (1.4 million barrels per day): Achievable with continued investment, but still leaves limited margin above export commitments. SPR contributions at this level would be modest at best.
- 1.5 million barrels per day and beyond: Industry estimates suggest several billion dollars of investment over 12-24 months would be required. Restoring production near 3 million barrels per day, Venezuela’s late-2000s level, could demand on the order of $180 billion over approximately 15 years, according to some industry assessments.
Venezuela’s peak production reached approximately 3.5 million barrels per day in the 1990s. The distance between that figure and today’s output reflects years of mismanagement, underinvestment, infrastructure decay, and sanctions. Closing even part of that gap is a multi-year capital project, not a political announcement.
The production and timeline numbers together tell you that moving “hundreds of millions of barrels” into the SPR from Venezuela is a multi-year project even under optimistic assumptions. The “very shortly” framing describes a political intention, not an operational schedule. The signals worth tracking are DOE tender activity and Venezuelan production trajectory, not the announcement itself.
Many people said American companies would never invest big in Venezuela when Trump captured their leader. Trump proved them wrong.
wow, that's a really quick turnaround for signed contracts on multi-billion dollar deals that won't pay off for another 10-15 years
which US companies have invested, and how much?
You never said which companies were investing big and how much.
Are you counting the US Army as an American company now?
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