Why Is the Trump Administration Wiring Venezuelan Oil Revenue to Qatar?

Peloni:  How has it come to be that we live in a world where nearly every question leads to some form of answer dependent upon Qatari involvement?   The proceeds from the sale of  Venezuelan oil is being wired to Qatar to avoid Venezuelan debtors being able to place a lien on the proceeds.  Qatar acts as the financial middle man in which the funds are ultimately auctioned back to Venezuela, while focusing on stabilizing and rebuilding Venezuela’s economic infrastructure.  The lack of normalcy in such an arrangement leaves Qatar with an outsized role of trust in holding the funds and arranging the transactions back to Venezuela, which should be particularly worrisome given Qatar’s previous role in Venezuela which could hardly be described as that of a neutral party, but rather as that of an insidious advocate and promoter of the Muslim Brotherhood.  As Sen. Elizabeth Warren has raised alarms over the lack of oversight in what amounts to a Qatari controlled slush fund holding hundreds of millions of dollars already, where is the accountability for this effort designed to specifically skirt accountability.

Natalie Ecanow | The Dispatch | Feb 4, 2026

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Why Is the Trump Administration Wiring Venezuelan Oil Revenue to Qatar?

Excerpt

The Trump administration hasn’t been shy about its plans to control Venezuela’s oil industry “indefinitely” since the U.S. captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in early January. Venezuela sits on the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but decades under socialist rule left production wanting. Western energy companies, boxed out of Venezuela when Maduro’s predecessor nationalized the country’s oil industry, say Caracas owes them billions of dollars.

“We are running the oil in Venezuela,” President Trump said on January 23.

Much has been made of the Trump administration’s moves to rehabilitate Venezuela’s oil industry, including the decision last week to begin rolling back sanctions. Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez subsequently signed a law opening the country’s oil sector to privatization. Yet for all the buzz, there have been only whispers about the role played by a third country: Qatar.

Natalie Ecanow is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan research institute in Washington, D.C., focusing on national security and foreign policy.