London, Jan 13, 2026 – Global oil trading houses have emerged as early winners in the race to control Venezuelan crude flows, getting ahead of U.S. energy majors wary of credit and legal risks and securing a potentially lucrative business opportunity in the country with the world’s largest crude reserves.
U.S. President Donald Trump said U.S. majors would invest billions of dollars in Venezuela to quickly rebuild its dilapidated oil sector following the U.S. capture of President Nicolas Maduro earlier in January.
Trump met top oil executives at the White House on Friday as his administration outlines a long-term plan to raise $100 billion to boost Venezuelan oil output.
The first companies to secure any business in the wake of the U.S. military action in Caracas, however, were Dutch-based trader Vitol and Singapore-headquartered peer Trafigura, rather than U.S. majors.
The U.S. government tapped the giant merchant houses because they were better suited to quickly get Venezuelan oil exports flowing again, four industry sources familiar with the negotiations said.
That is the first order of business for Washington before reconstruction can begin, so that revenue from exports under U.S. supervision can fund the government of interim President Delcy Rodriguez in Caracas.
“Securing and marketing the initial barrels of Venezuelan crude oil was done at record speed to benefit both the American and Venezuelan people,” a White House official told Reuters.
Venezuela relies on oil exports for revenue, and has been starved of those proceeds for about a month under a blockade Trump imposed as he raised pressure on Maduro.
Washington and Caracas are finalizing a $2 billion deal to sell up to 50 million barrels of crude to U.S. refiners and other buyers – oil that had been stuck on ships in Venezuelan waters and in storage tanks because of the blockade.
Facilitating the initial oil sales was critical to ensure funds could flow back into Venezuela for everyday services and a process is in place to maintain the steady flow of production, sales, and refining of Venezuelan crude oil, the White House official said.
Trafigura and Vitol have secured preliminary special licenses to negotiate and export the Venezuelan crude, and Trafigura is set to load its first cargo this week, Chief Executive Richard Holtum said at the White House meeting with Trump.
GLOBAL NETWORK ADDED TO TRADERS’ APPEAL
The trading houses competed with Chevron to secure the supply deals. Chevron is the only U.S. oil major that operates in Venezuela, as a minority partner in joint ventures with Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA. Chevron has a license from U.S. authorities, which exempts it from the sanctions the United States had imposed to choke off oil revenues to Maduro.
Trafigura is among the very few companies that can execute a deal of this size and complexity thanks to its scale, global shipping fleet and logistics network, Trafigura said.
Vitol said it has a long history of working on complex transactions requiring agile logistics, operations and finance.
The traders also won the Venezuelan oil export deals because they have a higher risk tolerance and are more nimble than major publicly traded oil companies, said three participants at the White House meetings.
Legal teams and advisors have discouraged some big U.S. oil producers from getting involved in the initial oil shipments due to the potential for Venezuelan creditors to seize the revenue, one of the sources said.
The U.S. government told the trading companies it would provide protection by controlling the bank accounts linked to the sales and shielding proceeds from creditors, three sources familiar with the matter said.
Trump moved quickly on Friday to do that. He issued an exceiutive order blocking courts and creditors from impounding revenue from the sale of Venezuelan oil held in U.S. Treasury-controlled accounts, the White House said on Saturday.
Venezuela owes more than $150 billion in foreign debt. (Reuters)
