The Pentagon will own 35 percent of the company taking over Venezuela's oil fields, two US officials confirmed to Reuters Monday night. North American Blue Energy Partners, a firm controlled by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt López, takes 14 newly granted contracts — five stripped from Chinese operators including Sinopec, China National Petroleum Corp and the sanctioned China Concord Resources, one from Russia's state-owned Roszarubezhneft — and plans to pump the crude to American buyers. "This opens up the United States as the market for this oil, which was previously being sent to China," one official said. The Pentagon's stake runs through its Office of Strategic Capital, an investment arm built to finance weapons technology, not crude.
Narativ reported Monday morning that the "biggest oil deal in world history" Trump announced Friday at 6:47 PM had no paper trail: no presidential action, no State Department notice, no mention in the eight Venezuela licenses OFAC signed August 27, and two governments describing two different deals. By nightfall, officials had begun attaching names to it. The names tell the story.
