Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: The United States announces a stake in Venezuela’s oil, four South American countries agree to cooperate on critical minerals, and Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi retires from international competition.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: The United States announces a stake in Venezuela’s oil, four South American countries agree to cooperate on critical minerals, and Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi retires from international competition.

A Controversial Partnership

After the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela on Jan. 3, officials from both countries promised major oil sector investments. Several of those deals finally materialized this week.

On Wednesday, U.S. firm Chevron and Italian firm Eni announced new plans for oil production in Venezuela. Chevron aims to increase its production by more than 300,000 barrels per day, or around a quarter of the country’s current output, over the next five years.

But the deal that really turned heads was a recent one announced by the U.S. and interim Venezuelan administrations. The U.S. government will take a partial stake in production at 17 Venezuelan oilfields “at zero cost to the United States” and benefit by buying some of that oil at a discount, the White House said on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the agreement would last a century, while interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez said that its term would be 25 years.

The details were not immediately made public, but the deal drew criticism from across Venezuela’s political spectrum.

“It’s the same opacity that has characterized the country’s oil revenues so far in 2026,” opposition figure Henrique Capriles wrote on social media. Rafael Ramírez, who ran Venezuela’s state oil company under former President Hugo Chávez, called the deal “new colonialism.”

Critics seized on the fact that there had been no public bidding process for permission to drill in the 17 oil fields. Such a process would have allowed potential partners to compete for the best deal with the Venezuelan government.

Rodríguez said that under the U.S. deal, around $19 from each barrel of oil—based on an assumption of a $65 price for the full barrel—will flow “directly to our country.”

Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez of the Center for Economic and Policy Research said the number is comparable to the government’s cut in neighboring Guyana and “not absurdly low.” But, he added, there is no way for Caracas to know if it is being dealt an unfair hand. “This is the first time since the Russian oil privatizations [of the 1990s] that I’ve heard about contracts of this magnitude being given out without a public bidding........

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