Politics
US Arrests The One Man Whose Signature The Venezuela Oil Deal Needs
By Mor Michael, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The United States has secured what President Donald Trump called the biggest oil deal in world history with Venezuela, a country whose president, Nicolas Maduro, was seized by American forces and is now in U.S. custody, which legal scholars say creates what they are carefully describing as a complication.
The deal, reported this week by The Guardian, faces questions across at least four distinct legal frameworks, has no confirmed delivery infrastructure, and was announced before anyone had worked out whether Venezuela's state oil company is still under the sanctions that the United States itself imposed and has not formally lifted.
Trump's interest in the oil of other nations is not new. In 1987, in an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters, he asked why the United States could not simply go in and take Iran's oil, which he noted was conveniently located along the sea. This was described at the time as a fringe observation by a real estate developer. It has since become foreign policy.
Iraq's oil was supposed to pay for Iraq. Libya's oil was supposed to pay for Libya. Now Venezuela's oil is supposed to pay for Venezuela, which in this context means the United States, which is a different country from Venezuela regardless of what the deal is called.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asked about the legal enforceability of an oil agreement signed under conditions that international law generally describes as coercion, said the administration was confident the deal reflected the will of the Venezuelan people and that America was open for business in a way that previous administrations had failed to fully explore.
He did not specify which Venezuelan people he had consulted, given that the one Venezuelan person with authority over Venezuelan state oil assets is currently unavailable for comment in a manner that is legally significant.
Experts in international contract law pointed out this week that an agreement reached after one party arrests the other party is not typically called a deal. There is an older word for it. Several of them used it and then asked not to be quoted using it.
The oil itself remains underground in Venezuela, which is where oil tends to stay when the extraction infrastructure has not been built, the sanctions have not been resolved, and the legal status of the agreement is being described in academic journals using the phrase 'novel theory.'
Trump, at a press conference Thursday, said the deal was moving along beautifully and that he had always understood oil better than anyone. He first said this in 1987. The oil is still in the ground.
A source familiar with the negotiations said the administration expected the details to be worked out in the coming weeks. The source asked not to be named because, they said, the details do not exist yet.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/26/donald-trump-oil-deal-with-venezuela