With the midterms looming, Trump has no real way out of his gas price problem

Gasoline prices remain near $4.11 a gallon, up more than 90% from last year, months after Trump's Iran ceasefire collapsed, and diesel is even higher. The real bottleneck, analysts say, is refining capacity, not crude supply: Middle East and Russian refineries are offline, and U.S. plants are running near max capacity while deferring maintenance to cash in on record profit margins.

Trump's answer has been to lean on Venezuela, whose leader Nicolas Maduro his administration seized in January, while easing sanctions and pushing the interim government to rewrite oil laws. The Pentagon has taken a stake in a Venezuelan oil company controlled by an operator described as Trump's ‘viceroy,’ and Chevron has pledged to double its Venezuelan production, but analysts say expanded output there would take six to twelve years to meaningfully affect gas pumps.

The administration also ended summer ethanol blending rules early and granted refinery waivers from biofuel requirements, moves opposed by farm groups, biofuel associations, and even the American Petroleum Institute, who warn of unpredictable market effects. None of these measures, analysts note, address the actual shortage of refining capacity driving prices up.

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