North American Blue Energy Partners to take over Venezuelan oilfields from Chinese and Russian companies

A private oil company most people have never heard of just landed one of the biggest energy deals in Latin American history. North American Blue Energy Partners, a Barbados-based producer controlled by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt López, is set to take over operations at 17 Venezuelan oilfields previously linked to Chinese and Russian interests. The deal, announced in late August 2026, comes with a twist that makes it far more than a standard concession swap: the US government plans to acquire a 35% passive stake in NABEP through the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital. Washington isn’t just blessing this arrangement. It’s buying in. What the deal actually looks like The oilfields in question span some of Venezuela’s most prolific producing regions, including the Orinoco Belt and Lake Maracaibo. Together, they sit atop more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves, and the contract is structured to run at least 25 years. NABEP currently produces somewhere between 160,000 and 200,000 barrels per day. The target is to scale that to 1 million bpd within five years, a fivefold increase that would make Venezuela a meaningful player in global crude markets again. For Ven...