🚨🇺🇸🇻🇪 Washington is close to locking up 17 Venezuelan oil fields for American companies Sources tell Reuters the deal would let the U.S. government secure a group of fields developed by American producers, with the resulting supply guaranteed for the United States. A lease is under discussion as the legal model, followed by an auction to divide the fields. The list spans green acreage in the Orinoco Belt and mature areas in Lake Maracaibo, some currently run by a small Chinese firm on a contract signed under Maduro. Venezuela is also weighing an exit from OPEC, which it helped found in 1960. Look at what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve holds now: about 290 million barrels, roughly 41% of capacity, drained by Ukraine and then again by the Iran war. Gas sits near $4.11 with the midterms in November. Six months of squeezing Iranian crude has left Washington leasing oilfields in a country whose president it captured in January, and taking them from a Chinese operator on the way through. Source: Reuters, Axios / Writer: Daniel