Donald Trump: Trump strikes a deal with Venezuela; the US will buy 50 million barrels of oil, and the money will be deposited into US accounts.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Venezuela had offered Washington 50 million barrels of oil worth $5.2 billion, and he had agreed to the deal.

Speaking at an event where Southern Boulevard was renamed Donald J. Trump Boulevard, he said, "We're talking to the new president. We're talking to the people who are running the country. They said, 'We have 50 million barrels of oil, and we need to process it immediately because we don't have the space. Will you take it?' I said, 'We'll take it. That's $5.2 billion."

Trump praises "great relationship" with Venezuela.

Trump also praised the "great relationship" with the Venezuelan interim government formed after a US military operation to apprehend former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He said, "We've had a very good relationship with the current interim president and everybody else. It's taken a lot of pressure off."

News of the deal had already surfaced.

Following Maduro's arrest, Trump had made it clear that Washington would be running Venezuela during this period and needed full access to its oil and other resources. Trump's comments also confirm a recent report from the New York-based news outlet Semafor that the US had purchased its first oil from Venezuela, worth $500 million.

Why is Trump having US companies invest in Venezuela?

According to a Semafor report, an administration official said the revenue from the oil sales is currently being held in bank accounts controlled by the US government.

According to another senior administration official, the main account is located in Qatar.

According to a CNN report, Venezuela has vast reserves of 303 billion barrels of crude oil, which, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), is roughly one-fifth of the world's global reserves. Earlier, Trump had said that he planned to enlist major American oil companies to invest billions of dollars to repair Venezuela's damaged oil infrastructure.