Britain’s energy giants stand to make huge profits in Venezuela amid a major diplomatic rapprochement between London and Caracas, it can be revealed.
It comes in the wake of the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro earlier this year in a move described by UN experts as a “deliberate violation of the most fundamental principles of international law”.
Donald Trump has repeatedly emphasised how the US intervention was motivated by oil interests, even telling the UN General Assembly last week: “To the victor belong the spoils”.
Hours after Maduro’s seizure, Keir Starmer said Britain was “not involved”, but refused to be drawn on whether it was unlawful. “We shed no tears about the end of the regime,” he declared.
The kidnapping is already resulting in a boon for Britain’s energy giants, with interim president Delcy Rodríguez welcoming foreign companies back to Venezuela and softening the country’s hydrocarbon legislation.
Since January 2026, BP and Shell have signed major agreements with the Venezuelan government as it appears to be operating under duress from the Trump administration.
Documents obtained by Declassified indicate how Britain’s Foreign Office has helped facilitate their return, with an influx of high-level meetings between executives and officials taking place in the weeks and months after Maduro’s removal.
The opening of Venezuela’s economy has also paved the way for the normalisation of relations between London and Caracas. Plans were made earlier this month to upgrade diplomatic representation to ambassadorial level.
But serious questions surround benefitting from the kidnapping of a head of state amid a broader assault on Venezuela’s sovereignty.
“US coercive control over Venezuela’s oil revenues may have involved violations of Venezuela’s sovereignty”, said UN special rapporteur Ben Saul.
That includes breaches of “the duty of non-intervention, the right of economic self-determination, and the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources”.
Professor Francisco Rodríguez, a leading Venezuelan economist who has advised its national assembly, told Declassified that “deals of this type are much more likely to survive when there is a broad consensus not only on their legal validity but on their desirability for the nation.
“At present, I see many more sectors of Venezuelan society that do not consider these agreements either legal or convenient for the nation, and some of them see them as outright exploitative”.
Rodríguez added: “It is hard to see any truly autonomous Venezuelan leaders signing these deals were a gun not pointed at their head”.
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Firesale
Venezuela’s economy has been restructured under Delcy Rodríguez, who assumed power in January and was pictured with Trump earlier this month in New York, just miles from Maduro’s prison cell.
The country’s hydrocarbon legislation has been modified to make the terms more favourable for foreign firms, and its energy revenues are now being diverted through the US Treasury, with Washington taking a major cut.
By July, the US government had collected more than $13 billion in revenues from Venezuelan oil sales, according to the Financial Times .
In August, Trump also announced a “historic oil agreement” with Venezuela which would give the US control of more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves for 100 years.
The deal would secure “our energy dominance for the next century”, Trump declared , “all at zero cost to the United States”.
Remarkably, the company at the forefront of that agreement, North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), hired three lawyers who had previously worked for the UK’s Serious Fraud Office.
It is within this context that Shell and BP have returned to Venezuela.
Shell has been granted concessions to develop and operate two offshore gas fields, named Loran and Dragon, which are projected to contain vast amounts of recoverable gas.
The company also signed a preliminary deal to develop two onshore oil fields known as Carito and Pirital in Monagas State, one of the country’s most oil-rich regions.
After signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Caracas in March, Shell’s regional manager Adam Lowmass recalled the company’s “long history in Venezuela, dating from 1912”. He declared : “I could not be prouder of our team”.
BP signed its own MoU with the Venezuelan government in April to develop the Cocuina-Manakin gas field which sits on the maritime border with Trinidad and Tobago.
The company was also granted a licence for the second phase of operations on the Loran field in partnership with Emirati XRG and Qatari UCC Oil and Gas, and has started trading oil in the US.
Shell and BP plan to process Venezuela’s natural gas using the Atlantic LNG plant and export terminal in Trinidad and Tobago, in which they are both major shareholders.
This cross-border presence will give the firms significant control over the supply chain of natural gas in the Caribbean, a large portion of which will be destined for Europe.
Meetings and lobbying
Data obtained by Declassified through the Freedom of Information Act indicates how the Foreign Office has facilitated Shell and BP’s return to Venezuela.
Executives from the companies met with Colin Dick, Britain’s chargé d’affaires in Caracas, eight times in the two months following Maduro’s kidnapping, compared with eight meetings for all of 2025.
While the Foreign Office has refused to disclose what was discussed beyond a few heavily redacted emails, the frequency of the meetings might be seen as implicit endorsement for the energy giants’ new ventures in Venezuela.
Oil has been guiding British foreign policy in Venezuela for over a century. Former foreign minister for the Americas Alan Duncan declared in 2018: “The revival of the oil industry will be an essential element in any recovery, and I can imagine that British companies like Shell and BP will want to be part of it”.
Britain’s current director for the Americas Harriet Thompson was in Caracas in early March 2026 as Shell was gearing up to sign major new energy deals.
Thompson “conducted a productive visit that included meetings at the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry and engagements with representatives of British companies to explore growth opportunities for both countries”, the embassy said .
When asked in parliament whether those talks involved British natural resource companies, the Foreign Office said the question had already been answered in January – two months before the meetings had even taken place.
In its own write-up, the Venezuelan government said the delegation was the first of its kind for years, and opened new routes for “trade exchange” within a broader goal of “strengthening cooperation in strategic sectors”.
Earlier this month, Venezuela’s foreign minister and former ambassador to the UK Félix Plasencia and National Assembly president Jorge Rodríguez, Delcy’s brother, were in London for another high-level diplomatic exchange.
Standing outside the Foreign Office, Rodríguez noted how the meetings with British diplomats had covered “oil and gas investments” and the “rapid economic growth of Venezuela”.
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‘Plundering’
BP and Shell have also been busy lobbying on Venezuela in Washington after a long period of relative dormancy.
Their efforts have focussed on convincing the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to give them licences to operate in Venezuela as the Trump administration eases sanctions for projects which benefit US oil interests.
In the first quarter of 2026, Shell registered lobbying activities worth $1.3 million in the US which involved “the commercial development of natural gas in the Dragon gas field offshore Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago pursuant to a licence issued by OFAC”.
During the same period, BP registered $1.18 million in US lobbying activities which included a focus on “Venezuela and OFAC licensing”.
Shell’s CEO Wael Sawan even met with Trump in January, saying he was “ready to go” with “a few billion dollars’ worth of opportunities to invest” in Venezuela.
Days later, US lawmakers implored Sawan and other oil executives “to decline to participate in any transaction or arrangement that relies on the Trump Administration’s asserted authority to control Venezuelan oil assets”.
Ricardo Vaz, lead editor of Venezuela Analysis , told Declassified : “Much like it joined the US in its economic blockade, the UK and UK-headquartered corporations are determined not to miss out on the plundering of Venezuela’s natural resources in this post-January 3 context.
“BP and Shell have been on the frontlines to take advantage of the reformed energy sector and feature among the six corporations that received the first general licence to negotiate deals with the Venezuelan government.
“Both companies had an extensive operational history in Venezuela’s oil industry, and they will now arguably return in the most favourable conditions they have ever enjoyed”.
Diplomatic rapprochement
The improved position of BP and Shell in Venezuela has coincided with a significant diplomatic rapprochement between London and Caracas.
Under Maduro, the UK government insisted fresh elections were necessary before diplomatic normalisation, but the position has now been reversed, with the Foreign Office saying a democratic transition requires improved diplomatic relations.
“Upgrading our relations will strengthen our ability to play a constructive role in support of a democratic transition” and “promote UK businesses in Venezuela”, foreign minister Chris Elmore said earlier this month.
This “upgrade”, he said, would pave the way for the appointment of a UK ambassador in Caracas for the first time since 2017.
To celebrate this new spring in the UK-Venezuela partnership, Delcy Rodríguez met with Britain’s chargé d’affaires Colin Dick in Caracas on 18 September. The pair were filmed laughing together as they fed deer and admired peacocks.
“Venezuela and the United Kingdom are opening a new chapter in their bilateral relations”, beamed Rodríguez.
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The frozen gold
One of Venezuela’s top priorities amid the improvement of diplomatic relations will be the return of roughly $4 billion of gold that has been frozen in the Bank of England for over seven years.
While Elmore said Britain’s “long-standing position is to recognise states, not governments”, it was the UK government’s decision to recognise a parallel government under Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó in 2019 that fomented the gold deadlock.
According to former US National Security Adviser John Bolton, then foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt was “delighted” to help with Washington’s destabilisation campaign in Venezuela, “for example freezing Venezuelan gold deposits in the Bank of England”.
After a protracted legal battle over ownership of the assets, Guaidó was ousted and his parallel government dissolved in 2022 – but the gold remained frozen due to Britain’s enduring non-recognition of Maduro.
The Rodríguez administration and the Venezuelan opposition have since engaged in negotiations, with both sides reportedly agreeing that the gold should be released.
These negotiations, according to the Financial Times , might result in the gold being transferred from the Bank of England to the Federal Reserve of New York, with the assets only available as collateral for government borrowing rather than for sale.
Transferring the gold to the country whose leader orchestrated the kidnapping of Venezuela’s head of state – after freezing the gold amid concerns about democratic legitimacy – might raise awkward questions for the Foreign Office and the Bank of England.
A spokesperson for the Bank of England previously said : “The Bank is not in a position to act on instructions until there is a further order from the UK Court which makes clear who has legal authority over the account. This requires the parties involved in the case to approach the UK Court to settle the dispute”.
The Foreign Office, BP, and Shell were approached for comment.
The post Trump kidnapped Venezuela’s president. Now Britain looks to profit appeared first on Declassified UK .
Trump kidnapped Venezuela’s president. Now Britain looks to profit
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at DeclassifiedUK.