Friday, September 4th, 2026
Bill Bonner, from Poitou, France
‘Hello Greenland,’ announced POTUS. The accompanying illustration showed him peering down at the island, a little like David ogling Bathsheba as she bathed on the roof.
What he was after was oil. In league with a Texas oil company, he hoped to turn Greenland into a kind of arctic Saudi Arabia, exporting millions of barrels of oil to the US.
Not likely, say the Telegraph:
Trump’s Greenland oil grab freezes over
The Greenlanders did not take kindly to the suggestion. And it looks as though the quest for oil off the coast is now stalled.
But hopes for cheap gas gush up from time to time, especially when you are facing a tough election. CNN:
President Donald Trump said Friday night the United States has reached an oil agreement with Venezuela, a move he said will “more than double” American oil reserves, increase oil supply and lower gas prices.
“At my direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working closely with Highly Respected Interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, and, through a partnership with private business, have secured majority U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer,” Trump wrote on social media.
If you can’t get it in the Arctic, go to the tropics.
And it was not just another of Trump’s ‘art of the deal’ negotiations, but a masterpiece of statecraft.
The recipe has three steps:
First, you take out the leader of a foreign country.
Second, you make a deal with stooge replacements...who continue, more or less, the policies of their predecessor, but have little doubt about what might happen to them if they don’t go along with the Gringo Gordo in Washington.
Third, you announce the biggest ‘deal’ in oil industry history, giving you 65 billion more barrels of reserves, at ‘no cost’ to you or your voters.
With this oozing bounty you will be able to refill the national emergency reserve, lower gasoline prices...and boost GDP with lower-priced energy. Or, so you say.
Yes, it looked like POTUS had pulled a rabbit from his hat. And it came just in time. Things hadn’t been looking so good for the Trump brand. Gas prices a dollar a gallon higher than when he began his war with Iran...sour polling numbers...negative wage growth...and GDP growth — when you take out the AI investment money — at barely over 1%.
Hoorah for the oil deal — the furry thing would make the figures hop from red to black...restore the popularity of Team Trump...and give the Republicans a decent shot at retaining control of Congress in November.
But questions arose.
Why not just auction off the oil rights, openly and fairly? How do you get 65 billion barrels of oil reserves for nothing? Does the puppet government in Caracas really have the authority to make such a deal? And if these oil reserves are really so valuable, how come they are still in ‘reserve?’
No sooner had the good news arrived than critics began pouring cold water on them. Foreign Policy:
Trump’s Venezuela Oil Deal Is a Farce
There aren’t 65 billion barrels, they won’t be lowering gas prices, and they won’t refill the SPR.
Even with a gun to their heads, they say, the Venezuelans are unlikely to give away a substantial part of their national treasure. There was more to the story, they pointed out, and it wasn’t very promising. Under the Chavez’s cronies the oil industry in Venezuela deteriorated badly. Production collapsed. Machinery and infrastructure degraded...or was stolen.
Delcy Rodriguez herself spoke of the need for $100 billion in investment. Where will it come from? Foreign oil companies have already been kicked out of Venezuela twice. How long will it take for the next Venezuelan leaders to forsake, foreswear, and forget they ever made this deal?
Not only that, the investment might be a loser from the get-go. This is not Saudi Arabia we’re talking about. It’s Venezuela. With different topography. Different politics. And very different oil deposits. Its Orinoco deposits, which are said to have more than a trillion barrels of black goo in them, contain what is widely believed to be the worst oil in the world. It costs more to get out of the ground and more to refine. And it emits more methane and carbon dioxide. The actual net present value of Trump’s deal, according to an estimate by David Stockman, may be as much as MINUS $84 billion.
In summary, what POTUS has pulled from his hat might not be a rabbit at all, but a skunk. And he’s holding it by the tail.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
All of what Mr. Bonner has written can be accurate and true, but I can tell you one thing with certainty: Chevron USA would NOT be down there, if it were not profitable to be there. Knowing Chevron as I do, there must not only be profit, but there must be an on-going upside. Chevron does not fool around when it comes to money. How do I know? My father-in-law was an Exec. VP with the company. He travelled half the world for them. He negotiated personally with the resource-magnate KC Irving in Canada. He was the company's liaison in Japan. He was regional development head for Central America. He started as a refinery manager and later as cat-cracker developer, engineer, and construction manager. He had numerous patents post graduation from Georgia Tech as a chemical engineer. (His brother, likewise an alumnus of Georgia Tech was a nuclear engineer and spent his career in Oak Ridge, TN.) My father-in-law, whom I had the privilege to call "Dad", knew the oil business from up and down and inside and out. Chevron knew it was not going to out-muscle Exxon, so they made it their business to out-hustle and and out-smart them. If Chevron is involved with Venezuela, I can promise you they are there, because they believe they will make money for the company AND its stockholders, which is their primary and proper raison d'etre. Best always. PM
I spent a few weeks on Maracabo in the mid 1980's working at a power plant in Maracabo. The utility had 5 boilers there on site that burned bunket C oil which is No.6 fuel oil. It's the worst kind of fuel you can burn fir generating power, it's high in sulfur, tar like consistently and nasty corrosive inside the the furnace. By far the boiler they brought me down to look at was the worst looking unit I had ever seen. It was a 100 mw stram generator so it was on the small side compared to some of the behemoths I'd worked on here in the States that burned coal. My recommendation was to test it down and rebuild it from the ground up. It's was a disaster. The week after I left they blew up the next door unit and asked that I come back down to ascess the damage. I decided that I could better spend my time here in the states where utilities and their operators cared about the equipment they were operating. My point is that back in the 80's Venezuela was a shit hole country then, and I don't think much has changed. Without either the US's help or some other developed nations help Venezuela will remain an oil rich shit hole of a country with nice people that are squashed by their corrupt government. They may have peanutbutter oil but have no means or ability to do anything with it.