US President Donald Trump at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday. US President Donald Trump says the United States has reached an agreement with Venezuela that would give it control of 65 billion barrels of the South American country's oil reserves. Trump announced the deal in a social media post on Friday, saying it had been negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela's interim President Delcy Rodriguez. "The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!" Trump wrote. The announcement comes nearly nine months after the US military, acting on Trump's orders, captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and took him to the US to face federal charges of narcoterrorism and drug trafficking. Trump has faced growing pressure over high petrol prices as the war in Iran enters its sixth month without an end in sight. US President Donald Trump's post on the Venezuelan oil deal. The US has also drawn down its strategic petroleum reserves. They fell below 300 million barrels in early August, more than 100 million barrels below their level at the start of 2026. In the days after Maduro was removed from power in January, Trump said US oil companies could return to Venezuela to develop its vast reserves. He has also argued that Venezuela effectively took US oil through former President Hugo Chávez's nationalisation of hundreds of foreign-owned assets, including those belonging to American oil companies. Venezuela has one of the world's largest known oil reserves, with an estimated 303 billion barrels of crude underground, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That represents about 17% of the world's oil supply. Unlike in some parts of the world where companies must search for previously unknown deposits, much of Venezuela's oil reserves have already been mapped and identified. However, the country's ageing and deteriorating infrastructure has severely limited its ability to extract the oil. Venezuela currently produces about 1% of the world's oil. The announcement of the new agreement comes as Washington seeks to increase oil supplies while dealing with the economic pressures created by the ongoing war in Iran.