Trump has now played a new card in the oil market: Venezuela. The US president has announced what he calls “the biggest oil deal in history,” claiming that through the agreement Washington has gained access to the majority of Venezuela’s more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and that the development could significantly lower gasoline prices for Americans.
But the importance of the announcement lies not only in Venezuela itself; the timing matters even more. Trump made the sweeping pledge at a time when the Hormuz crisis remains unresolved from the energy market’s perspective. In recent weeks, the US government has sought to create the impression that oil flows from the Persian Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz have largely recovered, using figures far higher than estimates from shipping-monitoring companies. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright even spoke of around 9 million barrels of oil passing through the strait each day. But data from Kpler and LSEG showed much lower figures.
Official data also paint a different picture. Based on Vortexa data, the US Energy Information Administration estimates that only 4.9 million barrels per day of oil and petroleum liquids passed through the Strait of Hormuz in the second quarter of 2026, compared with 21.6 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter of 2025, before the crisis began.
Even shipping data from late August showed no sign that Hormuz had returned to normal. Reuters, citing Kpler, reported that fewer than 20 cargo vessels passed through Hormuz over the weekend of August 24, while UKMTO data showed the number of recorded transits was around 90% below pre-war levels.
This is where Venezuela takes on political and economic significance.
If the narrative that “Hormuz is back to normal” fails to change market realities, Washington needs a complementary narrative: one focused not on the oil passing through Hormuz today, but on the oil that is expected to enter the market in the future.
The Venezuela deal has precisely that potential. Trump has focused on the country’s vast reserves and promised lower fuel prices, but turning oil reserves into actual production and supply is not an immediate process. According to the Venezuelan side, the current agreement runs for 25 years, with an initial goal of raising production to around 1.5 million barrels per day from 17 strategic fields. The Financial Times, by contrast, has reported on 100-year concessions for the 17 fields, a discrepancy that suggests the legal and operational details of the agreement are not yet fully clear.
Even if the 1.5 million-barrel-per-day production target is achieved, that volume cannot replace normal Hormuz flows in the short term. Its greater significance lies in its psychological and expectation-setting effect on the market. Analysts have also stressed that a meaningful increase in Venezuelan production will take time and will not have an immediate impact on oil prices.
The main issue, however, is not crude oil alone. The Hormuz crisis has placed intense pressure on refined-products markets. Reuters has reported a significant decline in Asian imports of products such as diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline, while Singapore diesel refining margins have risen 226% since the start of the war. In the United States, refineries have also come under unusual pressure to help make up for part of the global shortage of refined products.
For Trump, therefore, the challenge is not simply managing the oil market; it is also managing how the American public perceives the energy situation. If gasoline and diesel prices remain elevated, official narratives about Hormuz returning to normal cannot indefinitely conceal the gap between reality and claims, particularly with roughly two months remaining before the midterm elections.
Under these circumstances, Venezuela is an attractive political and economic card: vast reserves, potential US investment, and the promise of more oil in the future. But that is different from an immediate increase in oil supply.
Trump first sought to portray Hormuz oil flows as normal. Now he has put Venezuelan oil on the table as the market’s future supply. The difference can be summed up in one point: the market needs real oil today, not simply a promise of oil tomorrow.
NOURNEWS