United States Handled $12.26 Billion in Venezuelan Oil Revenue

The United States handled $12.26 billion from sales of Venezuelan oil and other natural resources in the first nine months of 2026, according to a report the State Department made public on Thursday, November 12, 2026. The accounting firm KPMG prepared the report, dated October 29, 2026, and the State Department transmitted it to Congress in early November.

Oil did almost all of the work in that total. More than $12.1 billion came from oil, other petroleum products and natural gas, while gold brought in $108 million, fertilizer $24.6 million and other minerals $22 million. Buyers deposited the money into a U.S. Treasury account, and the funds were then released to Venezuela's interim government.

Almost none of the money stayed in the account. KPMG put disbursements at $12.11 billion, nearly 99 percent of the total deposited, and $168.6 million remained in the Treasury-managed escrow account on September 30, 2026, the end of the federal budget year. The report doesn't name the buyers, because the names of the 20 companies that bought oil and gold are redacted.

The arrangement grew out of a seizure, not a trade deal. It was established after the Trump administration seized then-President Nicolas Maduro in January 2026, and the interim government that followed is led by former Maduro allies who now work closely with Washington. That's the government receiving the released funds.

The report is careful about who owns the money while Washington holds it. The funds remain the sovereign property of Venezuela, KPMG wrote, but they're held pending disposition for public, governmental or diplomatic purposes as determined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Ownership and control, in other words, sit in different places.

What the report can't show is what happened after the money left the account. It tracks deposits and disbursements through September 30, 2026, and it doesn't audit how the interim government spent the $12.11 billion it received. The next report in the series is where that gap either closes or widens.

Congress is the audience that can test the arrangement, because the report landed there in early November before the State Department released it publicly. Lawmakers got the same redacted buyer list the public did, so oversight starts with a ledger that shows totals, categories and balances, but not the companies on the other side of the sales. Whether members press for those names will decide how much of the $12.26 billion story is actually checkable from outside the executive branch.