President Trump spent months declaring his ouster of Venezuela’s leader had secured the country’s oil for America. When U.S. energy companies resisted investing at the speed and scale he wanted, his administration devised an extraordinary solution to turn his vision into reality: make the U.S. government itself an investor. The agreement announced Friday evening would transform the U.S. government from a broker of American oil investments in Venezuela to an investor itself. It would give Washington a direct financial stake in a private company that would be granted centurylong rights to some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves —and…

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