President Trump has promised his new deal securing 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil will “substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future.” As U.S. consumers wrangle with increased prices at the pump after a six-month conflict with Iran, a major agreement with Venezuela — who has the largest oil reserves in the world — will likely be slow to reduce prices anytime soon.
The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline sat at roughly $4.07 to $4.09 as of the final days of August, according to AAA — up sharply from $3.21 around the same time in 2025, an increase of about 88 cents, or 27%, in a single year.
AAA says August 2026 is on track to become the most expensive August for drivers on record, with the national average staying above $4 every single day of the month. That spike traces back to an entirely different geopolitical event than Venezuela: the ongoing war involving Iran, now in its seventh month, which has driven sustained volatility around the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global oil shipping corridor.
Since Trump’s Venezuela announcement, the price of crude oil itself hasn’t fallen — it’s risen. Johannes Rauball, a senior crude oil analyst at trade intelligence firm Kpler, told Al Jazeera that before the U.S.-Venezuela deal was announced, U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was trading around $83 to $86 per barrel, while global benchmark Brent crude sat between $85 and $88. Since the announcement, Rauball said, “prices have moved even higher — with WTI pushing past $90 and Brent topping $95 per barrel — driven up primarily by heightened geopolitical risks and acute Middle East supply disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz.”
In other words, the market’s real-time verdict on whether the Venezuela deal would ease prices has, so far, pointed the opposite direction.
