A provision buried within President Donald Trump's unprecedented oil agreement with Venezuela is designed to maintain a level of U.S. control over the South American nation for 100 years, the Wall Street Journal reported exclusively on Saturday night.

Announced on Friday, the deal grants the United States rights to Venezuela's untapped oil fields for a century. In addition, the U.S. government would take a direct stake in Venezuela's oil reserves — the single-largest proven oil reserves on earth. Venezuela has long held that distinction, with reserves exceeding even those of Saudi Arabia, though years of underinvestment, sanctions, and the deterioration of its state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), have left much of that oil untapped. The deterioration marks a stark reversal for a country whose oil industry was long a pillar of the global energy market: Venezuela nationalized its oil sector under Hugo Chávez in 2007, a move that reshaped PDVSA and drove many international oil companies out of the country.

According to people involved in negotiating the agreement who spoke with the Journal on the condition of anonymity, the U.S. government "plans to take a 35% passive stake" in North American Blue Energy Partners, a private oil-and-gas company led by controversial Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt. The company's structure was also deliberately set up to tie the hands of future Venezuelan governments.

"The private company structure was deliberately intended to bind future Venezuelan governments to the agreement and make it difficult to unwind," one of the people involved said, according to the Journal's report. "They consider it unlikely that a new government would expropriate a private company, the people said."

The 100-year duration and structural safeguards underscore what is at stake: any successor government in Caracas would inherit an arrangement affecting the country's most valuable natural resource for generations, which is why the design of the deal is drawing as much attention as its terms.

Trump has faced bipartisan scrutiny over the deal since announcing it on Friday. Critics include Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), one of the chief supporters of his operation targeting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who slammed the deal in a social media post before quickly deleting it.

Venezuelans have been critical of the agreement as well.

"It's an operation that's absolutely unconstitutional because it's an illegitimate government," Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan cabinet minister, told the Journal. "They are seizing [the oil] — there's no other word for it."

The full Wall Street Journal report is available here. The original article is published by Raw Story.