A Venezuelan Billionaire Just Shared The Details Behind Trump’s “Biggest Oil Deal In World History.” Here’s What It Means For A 68 Year Old With A $2.4M Portfolio Heavily Invested In Energy Stocks

President Trump called it “the biggest oil deal in world history,” and at Tuesday’s oil price the secret contract behind it is worth about $1 billion a year to taxpayers, with no dividend from the government’s 35% stake until the company more than quadruples its output. Those are the two numbers that matter in the 18-page agreement the Washington Post obtained and described this week.

The seller is Alejandro Betancourt, a Venezuelan billionaire few Americans had heard of before August, who showed a Post reporter around his wells in the Orinoco Belt and called the crude coming out of them “America’s oil.” His company, North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP, holds concessions on 17 Venezuelan fields with reserves the Post puts at 63.7 billion barrels, more than the roughly 46 billion barrels of proven reserves in the whole United States. Under the contract, the US government gets 35% of NABEP’s Barbados-registered parent for what the Post calls “nearly nothing” (one cent per warrant share, per ProPublica), the right to buy 20% of the company’s oil at $30 a barrel for 50 years, and first claim on the rest at market prices.

If you are retired and hold an energy fund or a few hundred Exxon shares from your working years, the question is whether “America’s oil” changes your money. Consider the hypothetical example of Gary, a 68-year-old with $2,400,000 saved and $4,100 a month in Social Security for himself and his wife. The short answer is that the contract likely barely impacts the Treasury’s revenue very little, and likely has basically no impact on your oil investments.

Here’s the problem.  The only cash this new contract produces today is the discount on one barrel in five, about $1 billion a year at Tuesday’s price, and the 35% stake pays nothing until output passes 1,015,000 barrels a day, a level Betancourt told the Post he aims to reach by 2033.

The limit of that reading is that a first-purchase right over every barrel a large producer pumps has real value in a shortage, and 63.7 billion barrels in the ground are worth a great deal to whoever can finance pulling them out. Here is what you actually own as a taxpayer, worked in dollars.

What the $30 barrels are worth right now

Brent crude settled at $91.49 a barrel on Tuesday and West Texas Intermediate at $86.04, both lower again as Trump signaled restraint toward Iran. When the Post wrote that $30 was “less than a third of the current market price,” Brent was above $100; the EIA’s Brent spot series had it at $107.03 on November 3. At Tuesday’s price, $30 is 32.8% of Brent, so the discount is $61.49 a barrel.

NABEP produces about 223,000 barrels a day, by Betancourt’s account, up from 18,000 when he took over in late 2023. One fifth of that is 44,600 barrels a day the State Department can buy at $30. Over a year that is 16,279,000 barrels, and the discount on them is worth $1,001 million, or about $1 billion. Spread over the 134,790,000 US households the Census Bureau counted in 2025, that is $7.43 per household per year, about 2 cents a day.

Two cautions: the $30, according to ProPublica, does not cover shipping or the blending material heavy crude needs, and Venezuelan grades sell below Brent, so the real discount is smaller; and it moves with the market, worth $650 million a year at $70 Brent and nothing at $30.

When the 35% stake could pay anything

The stake is the part Trump has described as worth hundreds of billions, and it pays nothing for years. The contract allows stock dividends only after production tops 1,015,000 barrels a day, 4.55 times today’s output. Reaching it by 2033, as Betancourt says he will, requires growth of 24.2% a year for seven straight years.

His near-term targets are faster: 275,000 by the end of this year and 350,000 next year, a 57% jump from today, with Bloomberg reporting a goal of 500,000 by the end of 2028. Growth like that takes capital, rigs and crews, and Reuters has reported that NABEP has struggled to open bank accounts because of past investigations into its owner. So the dividend date is a range set by the growth rate after 2027:

Francisco Monaldi, who runs the Latin America energy program at Rice University, told the Post: “I think it’s 90 percent smoke and mirrors.” What taxpayers have put in is a 50-year commitment and the government’s name beside a man under active money-laundering investigations in Switzerland and Spain, which he denies.

What it means for gas prices

If you drive, almost nothing, and if you heat with oil, the same. The United States uses about 20.71 million barrels of liquid fuels a day. The 44,600 barrels the government can buy at $30 are 0.22% of that; all of NABEP’s output is 1.08%. Oil sells at a world price, and the discount goes to the State Department, not to the pump. What moved gasoline this week was Iran: Brent has fallen 14.5% since November 3 on hopes the conflict is ending, and that one move is worth more to you at the pump than this contract will be in a decade.

What it means if you hold Exxon, Chevron or an energy fund

Gary’s hypothetical $2,400,000 sits in three accounts: $1,700,000 in a rollover IRA, $500,000 in a brokerage account and $200,000 in a Roth. He still holds 600 Exxon Mobil shares from his working years, worth $98,682 at Tuesday’s close of $164.47, and $90,000 in an energy sector fund, so energy is 7.9% of his money. He is a scenario, and if you retired from the oil patch or simply kept the energy fund your 401(k) offered, your statement probably looks something like his.

Nothing in this contract flows to him. The discount belongs to the government. Exxon signed a nonbinding memorandum with Venezuela’s state oil company on Monday to study opportunities there, and its own statement said any investment “would require stable policies, clear regulations, strong investment protections and competitive returns.” His $7.43 household share of the discount is 0.004% of his energy stake; a 10% move in oil stocks is $18,868. If the Venezuela headlines tempt you to add to energy, answer the question Gary’s spreadsheet already asks: what does a 7.9% energy position do to the whole portfolio if Brent goes back to $70, and are Exxon shares bought decades ago, with a large taxable gain, the right thing to sell when you need cash next year. Neither answer changes with this contract.

The questions the contract leaves open

Four senior senators wrote to Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and Energy Secretary Chris Wright that it is “unclear why the American public should support this attempt” to partner with “a relatively unknown foreign oil company,” and questioned whether the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital has the authority to hold the stake. The Cato Institute, which counts this as the administration’s 32nd equity stake in a private company, notes that the government has not said how “at cost” is calculated, who NABEP’s other owners are, how it can exit, or why there was no competitive process. The contract itself remains secret, and those are facts you can hold without taking a side.

The bottom line

At Tuesday’s oil price, the deal Trump calls the biggest in history puts about $1 billion a year of discounted crude in the government’s hands, $7.43 per household, and a 35% stake that pays no dividend until output rises 4.55 times, a line he hopes to cross in 2033. It does not move gas prices or an energy fund. If you hold Exxon, Chevron or the sector, oil at $91.49 and the Iran talks are the numbers on your statement. The contract is a story about what the Treasury owns, and for now the answer is a discount and a promise.

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