Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez defends ‘endless’ benefits of her oil deal with Trump

from The Guardian

Deal that will reportedly see US take control of 65bn barrels of Venezuelan oil has provoked outrage in her country.

Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has defended her government’s highly controversial energy deal with Donald Trump, insisting the South American country will maintain ownership and sovereignty over its massive oil reserves.

Rodríguez, who assumed power in January after Trump ordered the abduction of the president, Nicolás Maduro, took to the airwaves on Saturday to push back against criticism of what the US president has called “the biggest oil deal in world history”.

“The benefits are endless,” claimed Rodríguez, a former vice-president whom Trump backed after ordering Maduro’s capture during a special forces raid on the capital, Caracas.

During a six-minute television broadcast, Venezuela’s acting leader claimed the deal would help her resource-rich country develop its economy, earn revenues of more than $209bn (£154bn), and become “an energy powerhouse”...

But the deal has provoked outrage, both among members of Venezuela’s opposition and within the Chavismo political movement of which Rodríguez is part.

Speaking on Friday, one prominent opposition figure, who asked not to be named, called the agreement “a massive land grab” by a “rapacious, mafioso United States”.

Writing on X, Rafael Ramírez, the former head of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA, accused Rodríguez’s administration of “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the homeland” with the “neocolonial” transaction. “They are handing over 65bn barrels of our reserves to the United States. That has never happened in Venezuela, and I think nowhere else in the world,” Ramírez added in an interview with the newspaper El Nacional.

On Saturday, dozens of leftwing protesters marched through Caracas with banners reading: “We are neither a colony, nor a back yard” and “Yankees go home!”

Critics of the agreement shared an ironic meme on social media suggesting the state oil company’s name should be changed from PDVSA to “PDUSA”...

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