The Trump administration said it had an agreement with Venezuela’s government, but the country’s state-owned oil company said negotiations were underway.

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The United States has a three-step plan for Venezuela that will begin with stabilizing the country after U.S. forces seized leader Nicolas Maduro on Saturday, ensuring that U.S. oil companies have access to the country during a recovery phase and finally overseeing a transition,

President Trump's focus on Venezuela's and push to expand America's reach steers him further from America's top concern: the economy.

Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., said the talks were "within the framework of the commercial relations that exist between both countries."

Early in the morning of January 3, 2026, residents of Caracas, Venezuela, awoke to bombs falling from the night sky. Gunshots rang out near Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s presidential compound. Mere hours later, United States President Donald Trump announced that Maduro was in custody aboard the USS Iwo Jima.

On January 3, 2026, at two o’clock in the morning, the United States declared war on Venezuela by bombing several strategic sectors of the capital and kidnapping the elected president, Nicolás Maduro.

The question is whether the shifts will remain relatively modest, or if Maduro’s extraction presages bigger changes within both Venezuela and the region. There is a wide variety of possibilities. Maduro’s removal might facilitate Venezuela’s transition to democracy,