Venezuela's Oil Policy Has Two Tiers, and Only One Looks Like Custody

On September 2, the Venezuelan economist Martín Rodríguez y Rodríguez published a warning about what the United States was doing to his country's oil. He compared it to Russia's loans-for-shares program of the 1990s — the scheme that handed state assets to political cronies under cover of reform — and predicted the same outcome: clean titles for the old guard, a "Potemkin democratic transition," and strategic assets flowing to the connected rather than the capable ^[1]. The next day, the administration announced the biggest deal yet: majority control of 65 billion barrels across 17 fields, handed to an operator, NABEP, whose majority shareholder, Alejandro Betancourt, is under investigation in Spain and Switzerland for alleged money laundering ^[2]. The critic had named the pattern the day before the pattern arrived. The administration's own language splits the policy in two. Chevron's $7 billion commitment to two Orinoco Belt fields is described as "a measured approach"; the NABEP venture is "more ambitious and opaque in its operations" ^[3][2]. That is not a stylistic difference. It is the difference between two tiers of the same policy, and only one of them looks like custody. The first tier is what competent custody looks like. Chevron has committed $7 billion to develop two new fields, targeting 320,000 barrels a day by 2031 ^[3]. Eni signed a 25-year production contract to operate the Junín 5 field exclusively; GeoPark took a 25-year contract and a 65% working interest in the Bare block ^[4]. The revenue flows through accounts the US Treasury controls, and the US government authorizes the spending ^[5]. The licenses are public, the terms are long, the operators are majors. The architecture connecting the two tiers is the same legal framework. Every private operator — Chevron, Eni, GeoPark, India's ONGC — needs an OFAC license to work in Venezuela ^[6]. All payments go to Treasury-controlled accounts ^[5]. The January oil-law reform that cut royalties from 30% to 15% and let private companies run fields and sell crude was passed under the interim government installed after Maduro's capture ^[7]. The sanctions machinery was not dismantled; it was repurposed as the control system for the whole enterprise. The second tier runs on the same framework but with different operators. NABEP gets 65 billion barrels under a shareholder under investigation ^[2]. Pacific Coast Energy's $800 million deal rests on assets the Cisneros family says were illegally stripped from them — their lawyer called it "an abrupt, arbitrary, and unusual procedure" ^[8]. GeoPark, backed by $107 million from the Gilinski Group, is displacing the existing operator of the Bare field ^[9]. The same licenses, the same Treasury accounts — but the assets are flowing to new, US-aligned entrants with contested claims. The political layer completes the picture. The transition is run by former Chavistas. Interim president Delcy Rodríguez still calls Maduro's capture a kidnapping.

a very important step — Delcy Rodríguez

The US-backed talks exclude María Corina Machado, the country's most prominent opposition leader, and elections are deferred because, in Trump's telling, Venezuela is not ready yet ^[10]. The president has never hidden the priority ordering.

We’re in the oil business. — Donald Trump

Oil first, democracy later. But the capable-partners tier is thinning. Chevron has expanded output to 300,000 barrels a day through operational improvements but refused new multibillion-dollar developments; ExxonMobil scaled back after failing to secure preferred assets ^[11]. The majors are not committing fresh capital. Which means the policy's center of gravity is drifting from the tier that looks like custody toward the tier that looks like spoils.