An oil pumpjack at Lake Maracaibo, in Cabimas, Venezuela, in January | reuters

HOUSTON/MARACAIBO, Venezuela – U.S. President Donald Trump called it the biggest oil deal in history: 17 Venezuelan oilfields holding some 64 billion barrels of reserves, handed to a single company.

Delivering on it falls to North American Blue Energy Partners, a little-known firm led by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, who was until recently a target of U.S. money-laundering investigations involving funds embezzled from the state-owned oil company PDVSA. The company’s deal with Washington grants the U.S. a 35%-stake in its corporate parent and the right to buy 20% of output at production cost.

NABEP says it will lift oil output fourfold to more than 1 million barrels per day (bpd), up from about 224,000 bpd in mid-October.

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