María Alejandra Díaz Marín. – The bilateral understanding recently circulated on social media, which reportedly proposes majority U.S. control over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves in exchange for $100 billion, demands rigorous legal, constitutional and financial scrutiny. If its terms prove accurate, we would face a transaction with enormous consequences for public assets, economic sovereignty and Venezuela’s right to self-determination.
Under Venezuelan Constitutional Law, any transaction intended to compromise ownership, control or exploitation of the Nation’s strategic resources must strictly comply with the Constitution. Article 236 defines the powers of the Executive Branch, and no de facto authority, acting government, transitional structure or political representation may assume powers that the Constitution does not grant it.
The matter becomes particularly serious in light of Articles 150 and 187 of the Constitution, which establish mechanisms for parliamentary oversight of contracts involving matters of national public interest. No transaction involving strategic assets, rights over natural resources or future State revenues can validly take place outside the competent constitutional bodies.
Article 138 is equally categorical: any usurped authority is ineffective, and its acts are null and void. Therefore, no agreement entered into by parties lacking constitutional authority can validly create rights over the Republic’s assets, regardless of how political actors may present it as an international understanding.
The constitutional framework governing hydrocarbons also comes into play. Article 302 reserves certain activities deemed strategic for reasons of national interest to the State. This provision must be interpreted alongside Articles 1 and 12, which protect the sovereignty of the Republic and public ownership of mineral and hydrocarbon deposits located within the national territory.
From the perspective of Public International Law, we must also consider the principle of the permanent sovereignty of peoples over their natural resources, recognized in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1803 (XVII). Sovereignty over natural resources does not disappear because political agreements exist, nor can authorities that lack the necessary powers under the domestic constitutional order validly transfer it.
The financial dimension raises another fundamental question: the arithmetic of dispossession. If we accept the figures that have circulated—$100 billion in exchange for 65 billion barrels—that amount does not, in itself, constitute a technically valid economic valuation of the reserves. One cannot determine the value of an oil resource simply by dividing a lump sum by the physical volume of reserves without considering crude quality, extraction costs, required investments, expected production, royalties, taxes, infrastructure, future prices, country risk, net present value and the State’s share of oil revenues.
Precisely for this reason, if a transaction of this magnitude seeks to grant control over Venezuela’s strategic reserves in exchange for a fixed sum, the public must know its actual terms, corporate structure, economic rights granted, investment obligations, tax regime, guarantees, arbitration mechanisms and, above all, who constitutionally holds the authority to commit those assets.
This is not a debate between political positions. It is about determining who holds the legal authority to dispose of the Republic’s resources and under what conditions.
Venezuelan oil does not belong to a government, an opposition movement, a political party or an economic elite. It belongs to the Republic and, within the constitutional framework, forms part of the patrimony of present and future generations.
For this reason, any agreement that seeks to compromise control over Venezuela’s strategic reserves must undergo the appropriate public, constitutional, parliamentary and financial scrutiny.
Venezuela’s reconstruction cannot begin with a new mechanism for the opaque transfer of its national wealth. Sovereignty cannot be negotiated behind the Constitution’s back.
