MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The Venezuelan oil concession goes to Alejandro Betancourt's firm, under investigation in Europe

Betancourt said in a statement that Venezuela is “blessed with an abundance of natural resources, hardworking people and untapped potential,” and thanked Trump and Rodríguez

The White House on Monday identified the company that will operate seventeen Venezuelan oil fields for a century in partnership with the US government: North American Blue Energy Partners, owned by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, who is under investigation in Switzerland and Spain over his alleged involvement in a scheme to launder funds from the state oil company PDVSA. There is no conviction against him.

The announcement comes three days after President Donald Trump disclosed the agreement without identifying the private operator, a detail the administration had withheld. According to the document now released, Venezuela's acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, granted the company hundred-year rights over fields holding some 65 billion barrels of proven reserves, around a fifth of Venezuela's total.

Betancourt said in a statement that Venezuela is “blessed with an abundance of natural resources, hardworking people and untapped potential,” and thanked Trump and Rodríguez. He did not address the investigations open in Europe. His company is Venezuela's second-largest private producer after Chevron, pumping more than 200,000 barrels a day, with over 5,000 employees and 10,000 contractors, and aims to exceed a million barrels a day in the short term. The United States consumed around 20.6 million barrels a day last year.

The structure of the deal also became known on Monday. The Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital will take a 35% stake in the company's parent, and the State Department will have a guaranteed purchase of 20% of output at production cost, plus right of first refusal over the remaining 80%. The US government will hold a veto over all board appointments, a majority of whom must be US nationals, and the agreement will be governed by US law and subject to the jurisdiction of US courts.

The company has committed to investing up to 100 billion dollars in oil infrastructure and, according to White House calculations, will pay some 200 billion in royalties and taxes over the first twenty-five years. Rodríguez had put that figure at 209 billion. “This deal secures our energy dominance for the next century, all at zero cost to the United States,” the statement says, adding that several of the fields were previously held by Russian and Chinese interests.

The US administration also maintains that the reconciliation process it is promoting in Venezuela has already produced judicial reforms and the release of hundreds of political prisoners. The agreement reached on August 12 between the interim government and a section of the opposition annulled and restarted the process for appointing Supreme Court justices, without mentioning political prisoners or the electoral authority. The deal has drawn criticism in Venezuela from both chavismo and opposition figures.