{"id":6164,"date":"2026-09-03T03:06:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T07:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/venfort.com\/?p=6164"},"modified":"2026-09-07T03:06:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T07:06:42","slug":"bilateral-energy-agreement-between-the-united-states-of-america-and-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/venfort.com\/en\/acuerdo-energetico-bilateral-entre-estados-unidos-de-america-y-venezuela\/","title":{"rendered":"Scope, operational realities, and legal framework of the bilateral energy agreement between the United States of America and Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

An analytical approach to the August 28 announcement and the technical, regulatory, and market conditions that will determine its actual effectiveness.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Dr. Pedro Baute<\/strong> \u00b7 Managing Partner of the Energy Practice at VENFORT Abogados<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The framework agreement on energy between the United States of America and Venezuela, announced by President Donald Trump<\/a> on August 28 and confirmed the following day by acting president Delcy Rodr\u00edguez\u2014seventeen oil fields, a proven potential of 65 billion barrels, an investment exceeding 100 billion dollars, and operational horizons of up to twenty-five years\u2014constitutes one of the most prominent geoeconomic events for this part of the hemisphere in the last decade. However, a rigorous analytical approach requires separating political-communicational expectations from the conditions of technical, regulatory, and market viability that will determine its real effectiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To date, neither the regulatory text nor the contractual annexes have been published, and the two official versions differ: Caracas speaks of twenty-five years; the White House factsheet of August 31 speaks of \u00abone-hundred-year concessions\u00bb to a private operator with US government participation. The evaluation must therefore be carried out in light of the pre-existing legal framework and the structural variables of the international oil industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The legal and constitutional framework: limits and inalienability of deposits<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

From a public law perspective, one of the central premises for any understanding on the matter lies in the ownership regime of hydrocarbon reserves. Contrary to preliminary interpretations that might suggest a direct transfer of control over the deposits, it is observed that the Venezuelan constitutional framework\u2014specifically in its Article 12\u2014unequivocally establishes that hydrocarbon deposits \u00abare public domain assets and, therefore, inalienable and imprescriptible.\u00bb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, any international cooperation scheme, regardless of its geopolitical scope, is restricted to the granting of contractual exploitation rights and equity stakes<\/strong> in joint ventures or in contracts with private operators. This is confirmed by the Organic Hydrocarbons Law reformed in January 2026 (Extraordinary Official Gazette No. 6,978): it sets the duration of joint ventures at twenty-five years, renewable (Art. 35); permits private operators domiciled in Venezuela (Art. 23); guarantees the economic equilibrium of contracts (Art. 26); allows arbitration (Art. 8), and reopens services ancillary to petroleum activity to private capital. Sovereignty over the subsoil resource thus remains under the exclusive ownership of the Venezuelan State, and any private or foreign state association is conditioned upon compliance with current constitutional and legislative procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Infrastructure, refining, and the value chain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On a strictly operational level, the feasibility of the outlined objectives\u2014raising production above 1.5 million barrels per day, when OPEC currently places it at around 1.1 million\u2014faces structural constraints in the energy value chain. The extra-heavy crude oils from the Orinoco Oil Belt require complex infrastructure for their extraction, processing, and transportation, which depends on the continuous supply of diluents and the optimal functioning of upgraders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this sense, although the refineries located in the Gulf of Mexico constitute the natural technical and geographic destination for this type of crude, the sustained reactivation of export supply would require the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n