Locator: 51619CVX.
The deal as reported by The New York Times, September 1, 2026. Link here.
From the linked article:
Venezuela has possibly the largest oil reserves in the world — though it hasn’t produced much in recent years. The Trump administration hopes to change that.
President Trump announced on Friday that the United States had entered an agreement with Venezuela and a private oil company to “secure majority control” of 65 billion barrels of the country’s oil, or about a fifth of its reserves.
The deal is highly unusual because the U.S. government generally leaves oil exploration to private companies and does not take stakes in those businesses. It is also an ambitious project that is likely to take years to bear fruit given Venezuela’s dilapidated infrastructure, widespread corruption and unstable politics.
Here’s what you need to know about Venezuelan oil. Link here.
Why do I get the feeling this will not go without a hitch.
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Waymo
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Fashion Debacle At The NYC Met
From the link:
For more than three decades, the editor and star maker Anna Wintour has presided over the Costume Institute’s annual exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York — and its accompanying Met Gala, a glittery, billionaire- and celebrity-studded fund-raising dinner that has become the fashion world’s equivalent of the Super Bowl. In fashion, few have had more power.
How durable is it? Her role in the decision to honor an established antisemite, the designer John Galliano, at the 2027 Met Gala brought that into doubt. Yesterday, Galliano pulled out of the exhibition planned to showcase his work. “I do not want the debate surrounding me to place the Met in a difficult position or distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute,” Galliano wrote in a statement. “I also recognize and respect that an exhibition honoring my work would be painful for some.”
Why was he selected? Galliano was convicted of an antisemitic hate crime by a French court in 2011. He was said to have screamed “Merry Christmas” at a woman in an Italian spa in 2019 who was speaking Hebrew with her daughter. (Galliano’s spokesman denied that the incident happened.) The Times has quoted politicians, art-world heavies and Jewish leaders who were appalled by the pick.
“This is not a freedom of expression issue,” one New York assemblyman told my colleagues Vanessa Friedman and Jacob Bernstein. “This is a judgment issue, and I am baffled that anyone saw this as anything other than a terrible idea.”
