Venezuela’s Maduro offered the US his nation’s riches to avoid conflict

People outside the headquarters of PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company, in Caracas on Oct. 8, 2025. Venezuela’s autocrat had proposed allocating his country’s oil wealth and other natural resources to the U.S. and ending deals with American adversaries to appease President Donald Trump. (Adriana Loureiro Fernández/The New York Times)

By ANATOLY KURMANAEV, JULIAN E. BARNES and JULIE TURKEWITZ

Venezuelan officials, hoping to end their country’s clash with the United States, offered the Trump administration a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth in discussions that lasted for months, according to multiple people close to the talks.

The far-reaching offer remained on the table as the Trump administration called the government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela a “narco-terror cartel,” amassed warships in the Caribbean and began blowing up boats that U.S. officials say were carrying drugs from Venezuela.

Under a deal discussed between a senior U.S. official and Maduro’s top aides, the Venezuelan strongman offered to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, give preferential contracts to American businesses, reverse the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the United States, and slash his country’s energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.

The Trump administration rebuffed Maduro’s concessions and cut off diplomacy with Venezuela, effectively killing the deal, at least for now, the people close to the discussion said.

Though the United States has been targeting what it calls drug boats, the cutoff of diplomacy, the military buildup near Venezuela and the increasingly strident threats against Maduro by Trump administration officials have led many in both countries to think that the Trump administration’s real objective is Maduro’s removal.

Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser, has been the leading voice in the administration’s push to oust Maduro. He has called Maduro an illegitimate leader who is a “fugitive from American justice” and has been skeptical of the diplomatic approach conducted by a special U.S. envoy, Richard Grenell.

Proponents of diplomacy acknowledge that Rubio’s hard-line approach has prevailed for now. But they believe their efforts could eventually bear fruit, pointing to President Donald Trump’s sudden reversals on other major foreign policy issues, such as the war in Ukraine, trade with China or Iran’s nuclear program.

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen American and Venezuelan representatives of disparate factions calling for diplomacy with Maduro. They described their discussions on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Publicly, the Venezuelan government has responded to Trump’s military escalation with defiance and vows to defend what it calls a socialist revolution started in the 1990s by Maduro’s late predecessor and mentor Hugo Chávez. At the same time, Maduro has said he remains open to negotiations and his government continues accepting deportation flights from the United States.

Behind the scenes, however, Venezuela’s senior officials, with Maduro’s blessing, have offered Washington far-reaching concessions that would essentially eliminate the vestiges of resource nationalism at the core of Chávez’s movement.

While Grenell and Venezuelan officials made progress on economic issues, they failed to agree on Maduro’s political future, according to the people close to the negotiations. Venezuela’s foreign minister, Yván Gil, said in an interview last month that Maduro would not negotiate his exit.

Maduro has repeatedly repressed democratic challenges to his rule after assuming the presidency in 2013. He held on to power last year after losing a presidential election by rigging the results and brutally suppressing protests.

Grenell declined to comment for this article. The State Department, the White House and Venezuela’s government did not respond to requests for comment.

In Washington, U.S. officials offer differing assessments of the talks. One U.S. official said the reports of negotiations over the lifting of sanctions and access to the Venezuelan market was “not an accurate assessment of what took place.”

But other U.S. officials said U.S. and Venezuelan officials held repeated talks over what economic normalization would look like, including access to Venezuelan energy markets by American companies and a lifting of U.S. sanctions.

As Grenell and Maduro’s envoys negotiated a deal, the leader of Venezuela’s main opposition movement, María Corina Machado, pitched her own economic proposal in New York City.

She argued that even greater economic wealth — $1.7 trillion in 15 years — awaited U.S. companies in Venezuela if her movement launched a political transition. (Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee described as “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.”)

Machado’s economic adviser, Sary Levy, said the investment deals offered by Maduro would never materialize without democracy, rule of law and individual freedoms.

“What Maduro offers investors is not stability, it’s control — control maintained through terror,” Levy said. “The Trump administration has shown a clear intention to not fall for these offers of easy solutions.”

Venezuela produces about 1 million barrels of oil a day, down from about 3 million when Chávez took power. The bulk of Venezuela’s oil exports go to China, except for about 100,000 barrels per day that the U.S. energy giant Chevron sells to the United States. Most experts agree that Venezuela could quickly ramp up oil output with a major injection of foreign capital, though they differ on whether this is achievable under the current government.

“Our message to the oil companies is: We want you here, certainly,” Machado told American corporate representatives in June. “We want you here not producing crumbs of a couple hundred thousand barrels a day. We want you here producing millions of barrels a day.”

Machado declined to comment for this article.

Maduro’s economic outreach to the United States has also extended to the private sector, in an attempt to strengthen his hand in Washington.

Venezuela’s state oil company has given Chevron, the largest American company working in Venezuela, full control of their joint oil projects and the two entities have discussed giving Chevron a stake in another major oil field.

Venezuelan officials have worked to repair relations with another U.S. oil giant, ConocoPhillips, which left Venezuela in 2007 after the government seized its operations. Maduro’s government and Conoco have been negotiating an oil trading deal as recently as this year, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Chevron said its business dealings in Venezuela comply with all applicable Venezuelan and U.S. laws. Conoco did not respond to a request for comment.

The proponents of economic engagement with Maduro have managed to score minor victories.

Chevron got its U.S. Treasury license to operate in Venezuela reinstated in July, according to the Venezuelan government. The company succeeded in overturning the ban imposed by Trump months earlier after a lobbying push in Washington, according to people familiar with the deal.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday issued another license that in effect allows Shell, Europe’s largest energy company, to restart work in Venezuela. Under a new permit, Shell could begin producing gas from a massive offshore Venezuelan field as soon as next year, according to a person familiar with the deal.