Beyond a single social media post from President Donald Trump, the White House has offered few details about he is calling "THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY" in Venezuela.

The agreement, announced Friday night, would give the United States a stake in Venezuela's vast oil reserves, according to Trump — a step toward his goal of extracting energy from the country after American forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro in a middle-of-the-night raid in January and brought him to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges.

Venezuela holds the world's largest proven crude oil reserves — roughly 300 billion barrels, according to OPEC figures — much of it heavy crude in the Orinoco Belt that requires substantial investment and upgrading capacity to bring to market.

Venezuela's acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, has framed the deal as a step toward economic recovery that will modernize the country's oil industry. In a televised national address late Sunday, she insisted that Venezuela's sovereignty remains secure and said she wants the country to become a global energy powerhouse.

Earlier on Saturday, she said the oil reserves would "cease to be an inert, cold statistic and will instead become concrete solutions. Housing is one of them."

Still, answers to many questions — including how soon the reserves could be drilled and who will pay to make it happen — were not immediately clear. No text of any agreement has been released.

What is known — and unknown

The U.S. government and an unnamed private operator in Venezuela have formed a new company granted rights to untapped oil fields for 100 years.

A statement from Rodríguez said the deal involves the development of 17 fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels. The agreement, it said, could draw $100 billion in investment into Venezuela's oil industry and yield more than $209 billion in taxes for Caracas.

Trump said the agreement was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Rodríguez.

The deal gives the United States 55% of the new private company's effective output, including an ownership stake and rights to buy oil at cost. American purchases of the oil will go toward the U.S. strategic oil reserves as well as the military, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

According to that official, the company would become the second-largest corporate holder of proven reserves, behind only Saudi Aramco.

Will gas prices fall? Probably not soon

Trump says the deal will help lower gas prices for Americans — an important objective for the Republican president as the Iran war slows the shipping of Persian Gulf oil and keeps prices elevated months before November elections in the United States.

But experts have repeatedly warned that Venezuela's dilapidated oil infrastructure will take years and billions of dollars to repair, and a substantial boost in production is not expected to happen quickly. Venezuela's output collapsed from over 3 million barrels a day in the late 1990s to a fraction of that after years of underinvestment, mismanagement and, beginning in 2017, sweeping U.S. sanctions on its oil sector.

The deal could be "helpful in the long run, but it's not going to do anything to change the price of gasoline at the retail station for Labor Day weekend," said Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University.

Neither side made clear who would pay for infrastructure investments, or at what cost.

The average price of gasoline in the U.S. stood at about $4.08 a gallon on Saturday, according to AAA. A year earlier, the average was $3.20.

Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, said the oil industry is awaiting clarity on the deal's details. Venezuela has room to increase production — it has in the past produced more than 2.5 million barrels a day above current levels — but investments of this scale do not happen quickly.

"It's going to take time — many years — to deploy that much capital and produce the kind of incremental results that history suggests possible," Book said.

Anger in Venezuela

Some Venezuelans saw the deal as a betrayal of what their government has stated repeatedly for decades: that Venezuelan resources belong to Venezuela, and that leaders would never allow the U.S. government access to them. That stance long predates Maduro: his predecessor and mentor Hugo Chávez built his political identity on reclaiming sovereign control over the oil industry, nationalizing projects and expelling foreign firms in the 2000s.

At a market in eastern Caracas on Saturday, Douglas Borjas said he was upset by the announcement.

"I think they're doing it to cling to power," he said of Venezuela's leaders. "It's like, 'I'm giving you a vast amount of petroleum as long as you leave me alone here in power.'"

He added: "The Venezuelan people deserve better. Venezuela has resources that can be exploited, but for the benefit of the people, not for the benefit of the corrupt elite."

Harvard University professor Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan planning minister, called it a "shameful deal."

"Venezuelans will not respect this illegitimate deal and no major US oil company will take it seriously because they know it will not last," Hausmann wrote on social media, adding that Rodríguez "has no legitimacy or constitutional power to commit Venezuela to any such deal."

In her national address, Rodríguez pushed back against some of the early criticism.

"One thing must be absolutely clear: Venezuela retains ownership and sovereignty over its resources," she said, adding that the goal is to reach further agreements with transnational private companies such as Chevron, Repsol, and Shell.

"We want to be an energy powerhouse, a major oil producer, a significant gas exporter, and a major national petrochemical developer," she said.

Lawmakers react

It is unclear whether Congress will play a role in the arrangement, but lawmakers from both parties were quick to weigh in.

Trump allies called it a win. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, described it as a historic deal that helps both countries. "If it were up to DC Democrats, Maduro would still be in power, Venezuelan oil would be going to China at half price, and the people of Venezuela would be getting robbed by a corrupt regime," Moreno wrote on social media.

Democrats condemned the deal, arguing Maduro's capture was a means to this end. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Trump was always after Venezuela's oil, branding the arrangement "corruption at epic scale."

"Will prices come down for Americans? Who knows but likely not as much as Trump has forced them up thru his idiotic Iran War," Kaine said on social media.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said Trump "put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies."

Open questions remain

Many important details remain unclear, including who will cover the necessary investments, the identity of the private operator, and how America's stake in the company breaks down. The U.S. will receive 55% of the company's effective output, but it is not clear how much of that comes from the ownership stake and how much from the right to buy oil at cost.

How the industry will respond is also uncertain. Persuading major American oil companies to return to the region could prove difficult given the political uncertainty and damaged infrastructure.

Chevron, the only U.S. oil company actively producing in Venezuela, declined to comment. Separately from Trump's announcement, Chevron had already been in talks to expand investment in the country. Exxon Mobil also declined to comment.

David Oxley, chief climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, said that on its face the deal could double U.S. oil reserves and reduce dependence on crude from Canada and Mexico. But in a commentary, Oxley cautioned that logistical hurdles exist and that the value of Venezuela's reserves may have been exaggerated under former President Hugo Chávez.

Even with legal and security guarantees, it is not clear that U.S. oil companies "would be eager to invest," he wrote, noting that "there simply might be more enticing commercial opportunities on offer elsewhere."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.