US tally of Venezuela oil cash falls billions short of estimates - IntelliNews Lambda

Washington's first public accounting of the Venezuela Custody Account records $12.26bn in natural-resource deposits over nine months, billions below independent estimates of the country's oil export earnings alone.

The 53-page Report on Venezuela Custody Account Operations, released by the State Department on November 12 and prepared with accounting firm KPMG, traces payments from buyers of Venezuelan oil, gold, minerals and fertiliser into a US Treasury account between January 3 and September 30. It records $12.11bn disbursed and $168.56mn still in custody at the end of September.

“The report shows the process is working,” a State Department official said, according to Reuters. The document itself states the money is “held and managed exclusively for the benefit of the Venezuelan people”.

The report is the first official tally since US forces seized former president Nicolás Maduro in January and Washington took charge of who buys Venezuela’s crude and where the money goes. It lands as Democrats, who won both chambers of Congress in last week’s midterms, promise closer scrutiny of the oil arrangements the Trump administration stitched together with the government of acting President Delcy Rodríguez. Yet it is a ledger of the money Washington chose to route through its own account, not of Venezuela’s oil income. It does not say how much the crude earned in total, names none of the buyers, and offers little evidence that the dollars improved life for Venezuelans rather than the balance sheets of importers.

The process the official referred to is Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s signature three-phase plan for Venezuela. On the economic side, Caracas has done exactly what Washington asked. Rodriguez has pushed through overhauls of the oil and mining laws to open both sectors to foreign investors, and Rubio said in October that her government had met its commitments so far. But the political phase, which should eventually culminate in free elections, is lagging. Democrats and Venezuelan opposition figures, some of whom are negotiating with the Rodriguez government over the transition, have accused the White House of putting oil ahead of democracy. Rubio expects new Supreme Tribunal judges by mid-December and a new electoral council soon after, but no date has yet been set.

A shortfall of billions

Venezuelan economist José Guerra puts the gap at more than $8bn. On exports of 1mn-1.1mn barrels a day at an average of $82-$83 a barrel, Venezuela should have earned about $21bn between January and September, he told Runrun.es in an interview published on November 12. "Those numbers don't add up," he said, adding that he did not know where the difference had gone.

Guerra suspects the account does not capture sales by Chevron, which ships crude in its own tankers and keeps part of it to recover debts owed by the Venezuelan state, nor those of a second company he said sells at a 20% discount. Between them, the two export about 500,000 barrels a day, by his estimate. "Where are they?" he asked.

Other estimates point the same way. State oil company PDVSA former president Rafael Ramírez put export earnings at $14.3bn in the first half alone, on 187.1mn barrels shipped. The report's own monthly table shows $8.97bn deposited from January to June. The Financial Times estimated that Washington had taken in at least $13bn by July; by the end of July the account had received only $9.89bn, according to the official US report.

Deposits peaked at $2.44bn in May, then fell to $921mn in July, $1.02bn in August and $1.36bn in September, even as US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said production had climbed above 1.2mn barrels a day. The report does not explain the drop.

Meanwhile Chevron, which never left Venezuela and kept operating under Chavez and Maduro, and NABEP, the company of controversial businessman Alejandro Betancourt that won rights to 17 oilfields in August in a partnership with the Pentagon, operate under separate financial arrangements, the New York Times reported. The report lists 20 depositors "as provided by PDVSA", with every name blacked out. The two largest paid in $7.54bn, or 61% of the total; the New York Times identified them as Trafigura and Vitol, which won licences to market Venezuelan crude shortly after the January 3 raid. Reuters reported on November 11 that a Vitol gasoline trader's ties to Vice President JD Vance helped the company secure its licence.

Venezuelanalysis, a pro-Chavista outlet hostile to Rodriguez's US pivot, makes a similar point. Venezuela booked $18.2bn in oil revenue in 2025 under sanctions, lower prices and a US naval blockade, it said. At the pace in the report, this year's account would end at about $16bn, although output is up 11% on 2025 and the price of the flagship Merey blend 32%.

Dollars for importers, bolívars for the state

Almost none of the money went to the Venezuelan state as dollars. The report shows $2.09bn sold through Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) auctions from January to March, $9.32bn through electronic interventions at a fixed rate set by the BCV from March 31, $549.76mn in US banknotes flown in from July after the June earthquakes, and $133.11mn paid directly to vendors.

Commercial banks buy the dollars and the BCV debits their local-currency accounts, so the state's share arrives in bolívars, which "are then used for government expenditures, such as to fund public sector payrolls", the report says. Every release needs a request from the BCV and sign-off from the State Department and the US Treasury.

Legal entities received $9.37bn, or 77% of reported recipient flows, and individuals $2.87bn; the report says no government body received any. Food and consumer goods took $3.35bn, agriculture $1.18bn and healthcare and pharmaceuticals $532mn. The second-largest category, at $2.22bn, is "business and administrative services", a catch-all the report does not break down.

The report calls the physical dollars of its banknote programme "a vital lifeline for purchasing food, healthcare supplies, and other necessities", then records that 98.7% of banknote disbursements went to businesses. Of the $549.76mn delivered, $192.86mn was still awaiting authorisation at the end of September.

The single largest conduit was state-owned Banco de Venezuela, which handled $2.85bn of auction and electronic intervention dollars, about a quarter of the total. With the state-owned Banco del Tesoro and Banco Digital de los Trabajadores, state lenders handled about a third.

Ordinary Venezuelans have little to show for it so far. Consumer prices rose 225.3% in the first nine months of the year, and the annual rate stood at 465.5% in September. Monthly inflation slowed to 6.2% in October, the lowest this year, but the minimum wage is still worth a few US cents, topped up by a $240 government bonus. Guerra says that despite the BCV selling about $11.7bn into the market in an oil boom, its reserves fell by about $600mn through October. As long as the government uses the dollars to steady the exchange rate, relief will be slow to reach people, he said.

Venezuela pays for its own supervision

The vendor list shows where Venezuela's money paid for Washington's tutelage. The State Department hired KPMG "using Venezuelan funds", the report says, and on April 10 the custody account paid KPMG $18.18mn for "financial oversight and institutional financial support activities". Law firm Greenberg Traurig received $5mn for legal and advisory services, banknote handlers Moneycorp and Numisma $5.17mn, and accountancy BDO, charter firm XO Aviation and screening-software supplier BCG Finance Systems smaller sums, bringing monitoring, legal and logistics costs to about $28.8mn.

That compares with about $57.4mn for medicines, dialysis supplies, Chagas test kits and Venezuela's arrears to the Pan American Health Organization's vaccine and medical-supplies funds. Other vendor payments covered embassy repairs, the renovation of its UN mission in New York and a $1.3mn subscription to Argus Media.

In September, Rubio said that KPMG was responsible for auditing the money. But the report states otherwise: KPMG's services "do not constitute audit or attestation services under applicable professional standards".

The vendor-payment table adds up to $129.67mn against a stated total of $133.11mn; a footnote mentions returned March payments to Veridos, Swift and Argus Media that do not appear in it. A sector chart labelled as drawn "from sample" adds up exactly to the full $9.37bn paid to legal entities. Recipient flows of $12.24bn exceed the $11.96bn paid out in currency interventions because the BCV mixed in $346mn withdrawn from its reserve tranche at the IMF, which the report says is "not currently distinguishable" in the recipient data. It nonetheless states that "all figures presented in this report reconcile".

Oversight without daylight

The report arrives months after Congress first asked for it. The Government Accountability Office opened a review of the fund in July, and Democrats led by Representative Joaquin Castro spent September demanding KPMG's overdue reports. Democrats take control of both houses on January 3.

Caracas has published even less. The BCV has not released balance-of-payments data for the second or third quarters, Guerra said. "I believe this is the first time in Venezuela's more than one hundred years of oil history that the accounts are not public," he said, arguing that sanctions could once excuse the silence but that "there are practically no sanctions" now.

The report promises later editions with "enhanced monitoring capabilities". Under the January executive order that created the account, the funds "remain sovereign property of Venezuela", held "pending disposition for public, governmental, or diplomatic purposes as determined by the Secretary of State". 

This article was produced with the help of IntelliNews Lambda analytical tool.