Trump's Venezuela 'Oil Deal of the Century' Faces Legal Collapse
A Guardian investigation finds the US-Venezuela oil agreement is riddled with legal and logistical obstacles likely to doom it from the start.
A sweeping oil agreement between the United States and Venezuela that President Donald Trump has called "the biggest oil deal in world history" faces serious legal and logistical obstacles that could render it unworkable, according to a Guardian investigation.
The deal emerged after the US detained Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a sequence of events that immediately raises questions under international law about the legitimacy of any agreement signed under such circumstances. Legal analysts and logistical experts cited in the investigation indicate the accord is almost certainly headed for collapse.
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The episode is consistent with a decades-long pattern in Trump's public statements. As far back as 1987, Trump told ABC's Barbara Walters that Iranian attacks on American shipping during the Iran-Iraq war warranted seizing Iranian oil fields lying along the sea. In the years that followed, he revisited the idea repeatedly in the context of US military involvement in Libya and Iraq, framing foreign oil as a resource the United States had earned the right to claim.
Critics argue that unilaterally seizing or commandeering another nation's petroleum resources would violate foundational principles of international law, including national sovereignty and prohibitions against the forced transfer of natural resources. Beyond the legal dimension, the physical infrastructure, refining capacity, and bilateral contracts required to operationalize such a deal present formidable practical barriers that no presidential declaration can easily dissolve.
The Venezuela situation represents the most concrete manifestation yet of a worldview Trump has held for nearly four decades — that American power entitles the US to the energy wealth of nations it confronts militarily or diplomatically. Whether that vision can survive contact with legal reality remains the central question. Continue reading at Business | The Guardian.
