The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, reiterated this Saturday the signing of a significant bilateral alliance with the United States Government for the joint exploitation of oil fields and green blocks in the Orinoco Oil Strip.
It is important to highlight that this agreement aims to consolidate Venezuela as a global energy power, all under a contractual framework that preserves state sovereignty over the reserves. She also emphasized that the resources obtained will be directly allocated to the modernization of public services, healthcare, education, and national infrastructure.
Following, the details in the full text:
«Yesterday we announced a historic agreement with the United States government that will have a major impact on the lives of all Venezuelans in the medium and long term. We are decided on the Venezuela of a prosperous future, so that Venezuelans can look to the future in one year, five years, ten years, fifty years; we are thinking about the Venezuela of the future.
As everyone knows, our country has the largest oil reserves in the world. But having resources underground is not enough. We need investment, technology, infrastructure, and productive capacity to transform that wealth into well-being for our people.
It is useless to have our oil reserves underground only for them to appear in a statistic or an accounting and for us to say, ‘We are the country with the largest reserves in the world,’ when we cannot convert and translate them into development for Venezuela.
Our reserves must be transformed into well-being, prosperity, and happiness for this country, and allow us to recover our productive capacity to consolidate ourselves as an energy and production power.
This way, we not only generate better income, public services, We are not only providing health, education, roadwork for our people, but we are also contributing to the energy security of the hemisphere and a more balanced and stable international energy market.
This agreement is based on a very simple premise: each party contributes what it does best. Venezuela contributes oil, its industry, and the experience of its workers spanning more than a hundred years. The United States contributes the capital and technology necessary to recover and develop these assets. In return, Venezuela receives production, employment, infrastructure investment, increased state revenue, and productive linkages for the national industry. The benefits are out of sight.
This binational project, subscribed for 25 years, envisions the development of 17 strategic fields with a production target exceeding 1.5 million barrels per day. This is solely with the Venezuela-United States binational agreement; but our goal goes even further.
With the signing of other important agreements involving major companies such as Chevron, Repsol, Eni, Shell, and BP, among others, we aim to become an energy power, a major oil producer, a significant gas exporter, and a great national petrochemical development.
And here’s a legitimate question every Venezuelan has the right to ask: How much does Venezuela receive? Using a price of $65 per barrel as a reference, which could be more or less, our country’s revenue would total $209.335 billion for the Venezuelan state. In concrete terms, this means that for every barrel produced and sold, approximately $19 goes directly into our country.
The last —I want to remind you— major project for the development of four greenfield blocks in the Orinoco Oil Strip was through strategic partnerships during the oil opening 30 years ago, with royalties of 1% and a 34% income tax.
This binational project envisions the development of eight greenfield blocks in the Strip, with minimum royalties of 16% and a 34% income tax. What will all this allow? To leverage the country’s recovery and advance the improvements that all of us Venezuelans want, need, and deserve.
That is why we chose the path of diplomacy with the United States of America, to transform our differences into cooperation, and that cooperation into investment, production, well-being, and concrete results for Venezuelans.
I thank President Donald Trump, Secretary Rubio, and their administration for the effort made by both their government and ours, and by the entire Venezuelan team that dedicated time to reaching this agreement.
But one thing must be absolutely clear: Venezuela retains ownership and sovereignty over its resources while utilizing capital, technology, and operational capacity to leverage the recovery of a strategic industry severely impacted by sanctions.
Venezuelans have the right to know how much is being invested, how much is being produced, how much the State receives, and what the conditions are for the operators. And the objective of developing these must be to ensure that this wealth is once again transformed into production, opportunities, well-being, and a future for our country.
That is everyone’s commitment: a Venezuela that is reborn to improve the lives of every Venezuelan. I continue asking and praying to God so may His protection remain over our homeland and over our people.»