“In Venezuela... we're making hundreds of billions of dollars, and so are they.”

Fox News interview with Trace Gallagher, Los Angeles

The documented figure was about $13 billion, not hundreds of billions. A week before he spoke, he had himself put total sales of Venezuelan oil by his administration at more than $13 billion since the capture of Nicolas Maduro on January 3. The Financial Times reported the same figure, more than $13 billion collected in the year to date. An analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations put the oil moving through the United States-controlled process at almost 100 million barrels worth an estimated $8 billion through spring 2026. Official import data bound the arithmetic: United States crude imports from Venezuela ran between 200,000 and 630,000 barrels a day from January to June 2026, volumes that cannot yield hundreds of billions of dollars in a year at prevailing prices.

A much larger number does exist, and it is the claim's best defence. Weeks after he spoke, a 25-year oil agreement was announced and Venezuela's interim president said it could generate more than $200 billion in revenue for Venezuela. That is a projection spread over decades, announced after the statement, and it concerns Venezuela's side rather than the United States. Venezuela's entire national crude output was about 1.25 million barrels a day in August 2026.