The first cargo of Venezuelan crude under a deal between the US and producer NABEP unloaded in Texas on Tuesday and will be sold by the US Government to refineries run by Exxon Mobil and Venezuelan-owned Citgo Petroleum, a White House official said.
NABEP confirmed in a statement it supplied one million barrels of Venezuelan oil as part of the deal. President Donald Trump visited the port on Tuesday, where one of the vessels carrying the heavy crude served as a backdrop for his speech.
The government received the oil "at no cost," the White House official told Reuters, while Trump called it a gift earlier in the day.
NABEP's statement, which initially characterised the shipment as part of Washington's right to buy 20 per cent of production at cost with no markup, was later updated to say the cargo came at no cost to US taxpayers "to recognise the historic nature of the agreement."
"They've sent me as a gift a boatload of a million barrels of oil, and I'm giving that to the United States of America,” Trump told reporters. He later called it the "first shipment of BILLIONS of Barrels to come" in a post on social media.
The delivery is the first from an arrangement that gives Washington a 35 per cent stake in NABEP's parent company and discounted access to crude it produces.
The pact, struck after US forces captured and removed former President Nicolas Maduro from power in January, handed NABEP 14 additional oilfields on top of the three it already had in Venezuela, without a competitive process.
"This first shipment since the US-NABEP deal will be followed by thousands of such arrivals," NABEP CEO Alejandro Betancourt said in the company's statement. He said the cargo reached Texas in just over a week, compared with more than a month for crude from the Middle East.
NABEP has said the 17 fields it controls in Venezuela hold an estimated 65 billion barrels of oil reserves. The company's total output reached 223,509 barrels of oil equivalent per day as of October 19, it said, up from about 18,000 bpd two years ago.
Betancourt said last week that output at Petrozamora, its largest active project, had risen to 115,000 bpd.
The shipment gives Trump a chance to tout access to cheaper crude as evidence his policies are delivering economic benefits ahead of the midterm elections.
"We're celebrating the greatest oil victory in history. To the victor belongs the spoils, right?" Trump said.
Trump also praised oil executive Harold Hamm, who was in attendance, as the "biggest independent oilman in the world," before recounting a conversation about Venezuela's vast petroleum reserves.
Hamm had described the country's oil wealth as so abundant that finding it was almost effortless, Trump said.
"You know how you find oil in Venezuela? You look on the ground. There it is," Trump said.
(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, with additional reporting from Marianna Parraga and Steve Holland; Editing by Nathan Crooks and Sonali Paul)