The columnist frames Trump’s late-August “biggest oil deal in world history” (majority U.S. control of 65bn Venezuelan barrels “at no cost”) as plunder after Maduro’s January seizure, with interim President Rodríguez citing a 25-year Hydrocarbons Law pact ($100bn investment, $209bn royalties/taxes) and Trump conceding pump prices may not fall before the midterms.

Analysts (GasBuddy’s De Haan, Lipow) say material price effects are years and ~$180bn of infrastructure away; legal title and constitutionality are questioned as adding investor risk, not reducing it.

Named private partner NABEP’s Alejandro Betancourt is described as under embezzlement/laundering scrutiny yet moving rigs; the piece calls the model gangster capitalism that locks in clientelism rather than a near-term gas-price win.

When the Trump administration abducted the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on January 3, an open incitement to international lawbreaking was asserted.  Here was thuggish impunity, crude acquisition and harsh plunder in operation: the seizure of a sovereign leader in office on fanciful narco-terrorist charges, a violation of the territorial sanctity of a state guaranteed by Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, and the demand that Venezuela be compliant with Washington’s objectives in its vulgar reiteration of the Monroe Doctrine.  The prize was clearly oil.

Towards the end of August, President Donald Trump was in a sprightly mood on his favourite platform of choice, Truth Social.  In a post, the President announced that he had reached, with Venezuela, “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!”  Under his direction, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working with interim President Delcy Rodriguez of........

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