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.

Beyond the immediate market reaction, the physical characteristics of Venezuelan crude present a structural obstacle to fast relief. The oil covered by the deal is heavy crude, chemically harder to refine than the lighter grades most global refineries are built to process. Tom Kloza, chief energy adviser at Gulf Oil, put the timeline bluntly: “It’s not going to result in cheaper gasoline, diesel or jet fuel prices over the next five days, five weeks or five months. It’s just not. It could have some impact, but it’s probably four or five years down the road.”

Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy, echoed the point, noting that Trump’s 65-billion-barrel figure represents an estimate of oil Venezuela may possess, not supply that’s ready to be pumped and shipped: “While the hope of lower gas prices sounds promising, it still will take billions of investment to get that oil.”

What Would Have To Happen First

Multiple analysts outlined the same basic sequence of steps standing between Friday’s announcement and any change at the pump. Jaime Brito, executive director of refining and oil products at Dow Jones Energy, said flatly: “It’s not going to change market fundamentals in 2026. It’s not going to change consumer prices next year.”

Investment bank UBS, in an August 31 research note, went further, flagging genuine legal and operational risk to the entire venture: “From a U.S. oil company’s perspective, any significant investment in Venezuela would generally need to be accompanied by a legal framework that could survive a change in leadership in both the U.S. and Venezuela,” the bank’s analysts wrote, pointing specifically to ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, which are still owed significant sums under legal judgments tied to Venezuelan assets expropriated in past decades.

UBS concluded that “investments in Venezuela would have to compare favorably on a risk-adjusted basis with alternatives around the world” — a test the bank suggested is not automatically cleared just because a new agreement exists on paper.

The Scale, in Context

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, just over 300 billion barrels according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration — by comparison, the United States holds fewer than 50 billion barrels in proven reserves of its own.

The 65 billion barrels covered by the new deal represents more than one-fifth of Venezuela’s total reserve base. Even against that genuinely enormous resource, analysts note the near-term supply math doesn’t move: Marco Galimberti, an energy analyst, said the far more effective lever for lowering gasoline and diesel prices in the short term would be increasing flows from the Middle East, pointing to newer pipelines and ports built specifically to bypass the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint — infrastructure that already exists, unlike the Venezuelan production increases the new deal anticipates.

The White House’s Own Signal

Even the Trump administration’s public schedule suggests the immediate pump-price question remains unresolved: White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers confirmed Trump was scheduled to meet directly with U.S. energy refiners and distributors this week specifically to discuss the Venezuelan deal, saying the president “is laser-focused on ensuring his successful energy dominance agenda translates into the most cost savings possible at the pump for consumers.”

De Haan characterized the announcement itself as “a signal that the White House remains concerned about elevated fuel prices — though in reality, any benefits from increased Venezuelan output will take years to fully materialize and are unlikely to move the needle in the near term.”

What This Means for Household Budgets

For consumers weighing whether to expect relief before the November midterms, Brito’s assessment was direct: “I don‘t see any way in which this can benefit voters or consumers between now and November of this year.” With gas prices already running nearly a dollar higher per gallon than a year ago, and with the structural, legal, and physical obstacles analysts have identified pointing toward a multi-year timeline at best, the immediate reality for American drivers is that Friday’s historic-sounding announcement is unlikely to show up on a single receipt at the pump anytime in the near future.

With crude prices having risen rather than fallen since the deal’s announcement, and analysts across multiple institutions converging on a timeline measured in years rather than months, the practical test of Trump’s promise will play out gradually — dependent on how quickly companies like Chevron can convert the newly signed contracts into actual increased production, and on how the unresolved Iran conflict and Strait of Hormuz disruptions evolve independently of anything happening in Venezuela.