Key quotes on the controversial US-Venezuela oil deal.

“The wealth of our subsoil does not belong to an illegitimate regime – it belongs to the Venezuelan people.”
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on September 3, 2026 after the US announced plans to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

“The American Nationalization of Venezuelan Oil.”
Title of editorial in National Review, September 2, 2026, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

“The Trump administration isn’t trying to end socialism in Venezuela. Instead, it is doing socialism in Venezuela.”
Eric Boehm in Reason, September 2, 2026, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

“Little drilling is ever going to happen, even if you think the Venezuelan people will tolerate such plunder of their sovereign resources in a coercive joint venture with a hated neo-Marxist dictatorship, which I do not.”
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph, September 1, 2026, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

“His Maga-Chavista joint venture is an odd mix of imperial predation, theatre, and commercial nonsense.”
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph, September 1, 2026, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

“This deal was clearly arrived at in secrecy, with no public debate, and signed under duress. Therefore, it is illegitimate and probably illegal.”
Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University, in Fortune, August 31, 2026, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

“If the goal was to try to reduce the risk of investing in Venezuela, the United States might be doing the exact opposite with this transaction: further weakening the country’s already fragile institutional framework.”
Luisa Palacios, adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels, as quoted by Reuters, August 31, 2026.

“Someone who is arguably even more disliked in Venezuela than Delcy Rodríguez, because he is the poster boy for Chavista corruption.”
Pedro Burelli, a former member of the board of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA and a longtime supporter of the Venezuelan opposition, on the key role Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt will play in the US deal to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels,  as quoted by The Miami Herald, August 31, 2026.

“Trump’s promises are all sensationalist, ambitious, provocative and conflictive initiatives that then face the courts, Congress and the opposition. So if the agreement follows the pattern of his other major proposals… this won’t take off.”
Moises Naim, Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former industry and commerce minister in Venezuela, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels, as quoted by El Pais, August 31, 2026.

“His deal announced late Friday with unelected President Delcy Rodríguez for rights to 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves looks less like a normal commercial transaction than it does the famous scene of U.S. businessmen meeting with the Cuban strongman in “The Godfather Part II.”
Editorial in The Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2026, on Donald Trump’s plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

“The president’s mingling of self-interest with the national interest makes his foreign policy more Don Corleone than Disraeli.”
Jake Wallis Simons in the Daily Telegraph, August 29, 2026, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

“Venezuelans will not respect this illegitimate deal and no major US oil company will take it seriously because they know it will not last. No wonder you are using wanted criminals – like Alejandro Betancourt – to make this shameful deal.”
Ricardo Hausmann, professor at Harvard University and an exiled former Venezuelan planning minister, in open letter to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on X, August 28, 2026, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

“It’s a land grab – a massive land grab. It’s revolting because this is not the United States one would have [expected]. This is not the United States of the Marshall plan. This is a rapacious, mafioso United States.” 
A well-known Venezuelan opposition figure who asked not to be named because of the sensitivities of criticizing the US, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels, as quoted by The Guardian, August 28, 2026.

“An illegitimate interim government with an illegitimate hydrocarbons law has no legitimacy to strike this unconstitutional deal. It will be a fiasco for all involved.”
Ricardo Hausmann, professor at Harvard University and an exiled former Venezuelan planning minister, on X, August 27, 2026, on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

“Handing over Venezuela’s oil wealth to the US contravenes the constitution and is not in the interest of the Venezuelan people – much more when it is done at gunpoint.”
Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez on plans for the US to control 17 oil fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels, as quoted by The Guardian, August 28, 2026.

More Quoted