By Staff Reporter | NewsAmericasNow.com
News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Tues. June 30, 2026: The United States says it has committed over $300 million in humanitarian aid to help the Venezuela earthquake that has so far killed over 1,700 people and left thousands more injured and missing. It is a significant sum, but it is dwarfed by a far larger and largely unreported figure: the estimated $8 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue that the Trump administration has controlled since seizing oversight of the country’s oil exports following the January 3rd military intervention that deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Where that money has gone – and who is accountable for it – remains one of the most important unanswered questions in US foreign policy today.
The Earthquake Crisis
On June 24, 2024, devastating back-to-back earthquakes struck Venezuela, killing at least 1,719 people, injuring over 5,000, and leaving thousands still missing as of June 29, 2026.
The Trump administration’s humanitarian response has been substantial by historical standards. The total emergency relief package of over $300 million is distributed as follows: $100 million allocated to the United Nations humanitarian fund OCHA; $50 million in bilateral assistance directed to faith-based and international aid groups including Samaritan’s Purse, Catholic Relief Services, and the World Food Programme; and an additional $150 million or more mobilized in supplemental disaster assistance, logistical support, and search-and-rescue team deployments.
For context, the US provided $210.9 million in bilateral economic and humanitarian aid to Venezuela in all of 2024, followed by approximately $15.3 million in 2025 prior to the recent emergency. The earthquake response represents a significant surge.
But for Venezuela’s earthquake victims – and for the millions of Venezuelans who have endured one of the worst humanitarian crises in the Western Hemisphere’s peacetime history – the $300 million figure raises an unavoidable question: what has happened to the far larger sum of Venezuelan oil revenue that Washington now controls?
The $8 Billion Question
In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports following Maduro’s ouster, almost 100 million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight, according to analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited Venezuela to coordinate new policies, with Venezuela passing a hydrocarbons law that opens the sector to private and foreign investment. American commodity traders and energy majors have authorization to boost production. Proceeds from global sales are routed directly into U.S. Treasury accounts to shield them from creditors and are disbursed “conditionally.” US refineries, which are optimally designed to process heavy crude, are the primary recipients.
As Roxanna Vigil, an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former senior sanctions policy advisor at the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, wrote in a June 3, 2026 analysis: “In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight. While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds since seizing control of the country’s oil exports.”
Based on tanker-tracking data from Bloomberg and reports on discounts applied to Venezuelan crude, the estimated value of US-controlled oil exports increased from $600 million in January – about 380,000 barrels per day – to approximately $3.7 billion in April alone, as production climbed to about 1.1 million barrels per day. The largest recipients of Venezuelan oil since January 3 have been the United States at 43 percent, India at 26 percent, and Spain at 8 percent.
The Trump administration has shared some details with Congress. Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified in January that $300 million had flowed through a short-term account in Qatar and been disbursed to Venezuela, while another $200 million was still sitting in the account. The following month, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said during a press interview that the full $500 million had been transferred to Venezuela and that the administration would use US Treasury accounts going forward.
But the administration has yet to provide a public accounting of the Qatar account – including how the funds were spent or what safeguards were in place to prevent corruption and money laundering. In April, a State Department witness told Congress that the department had authorized the disbursement of about $3 billion to Venezuela, but the witness did not know how much money remained in the US Treasury accounts.
Neither the balance in the Qatar account nor the US Treasury accounts has been publicly disclosed.
No Transparency. No Accountability. No Answers.
Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company PDVSA has not published oil revenue figures since 2016. The Trump administration has not publicly disclosed the exact figures it controls. It is also unclear who within the administration oversees those funds. Both Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately committed to Congress to share copies of the written agreements governing US control of Venezuelan oil exports. No copies have been made public to date.
The companies involved in trading Venezuelan oil add another layer of concern. Commodities trading companies Trafigura and Vitol – each of which has a history of bribery schemes related to oil sales – remain involved in Venezuela five months after Rubio described them to Congress as a short-term fix. A third trader, GE Warren, has since entered the picture, with no explanation from the administration for their ongoing role.
In mid-April, a State Department witness told Congress that accounting firm KPMG would conduct quarterly audits of how Venezuelan oil revenues are being spent – including a retrospective audit from the beginning – but said he did not know when the reports would be available.
The system’s opacity is not limited to oil. The Trump administration is also controlling Venezuelan gold and other mineral exports. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, after leading a delegation of mining executives to Venezuela in March, indicated that he secured $100 million of gold and helped broker a deal for Venezuela to sell up to one thousand kilograms of gold to trader Trafigura. Export revenue from gold and minerals is also going into US Treasury accounts under the same opaque system as the oil funds.
Same Regime, Different Leader
Rubio himself told Congress in January that what the US has in Venezuela is a corrupt and broken oil company run by the government and that the glue that held the regime together was corruption and graft. Five months later, nothing has changed on the ground. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez retains control over the different Chavista factions as she complies with the narrow economic concessions demanded by Washington. President Trump has praised Rodríguez for doing a great job.
Rodríguez is getting much of what she wants in return – including diplomatic recognition and sanctions relief. The reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States has legitimized her position and opened the door for Venezuela to restore ties with the international community that were severed in 2019.
Unlike the first Trump administration, which issued a framework outlining concrete steps the Venezuelan government would need to take to earn lasting sanctions relief, there is no such plan in place now. More than 400 political prisoners remain detained in Venezuela. No date has been set for free and fair elections.
What This Means For The Region
Venezuela’s crisis does not exist in isolation. The country’s collapse has driven the largest peacetime migration crisis in the Western Hemisphere’s recent history – with millions of Venezuelans fleeing to the US, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and beyond, placing enormous strain on Caribbean and Latin American nations that have absorbed the largest share of displaced Venezuelans.
As US Democratic lawmakers have formally requested a Government Accountability Office audit of the system the Trump administration has established to control Venezuela’s oil exports – and as the Venezuelan opposition’s May 29 Panama Manifesto carefully endorses a three-phase transition plan while explicitly calling for presidential elections – the window for accountability is narrowing.
$300 million in earthquake aid is welcome. But for Venezuela’s people, the $8 billion question demands an answer. They need that money now to help them save lives and rebuild.