The administration took two actions on 19 March to contain oil prices. The Treasury issued a broad authorisation for Venezuela's PDVSA to sell crude on global markets, with payments routed through a US-controlled account1. Trump separately waived the Jones Act for 60 days, suspending the requirement that energy cargoes shipped between American ports travel on US-flagged vessels2. Neither measure was accompanied by a volume target or explanation of expected impact.
Venezuela holds the world's largest proven crude reserves — an estimated 300 billion barrels — but production has collapsed from roughly 3.3 million barrels per day in the late 1990s to approximately 900,000 bpd under two decades of mismanagement, underinvestment, and sanctions. Even with full authorisation, Venezuela lacks the rigs, skilled workforce, and pipeline infrastructure to raise output meaningfully within weeks. Any gains would take months and measure in the low hundreds of thousands of barrels — a fraction of the 17 million barrels per day that transited Hormuz before the closure. The US-controlled payment structure also limits Caracas's incentive: Maduro gains sanctions relief but not full revenue sovereignty.
The Jones Act waiver addresses a narrower problem. The 1920 Merchant Marine Act restricts US coastal shipping to American-built, American-owned, American-crewed vessels — a constraint that creates artificial scarcity on domestic routes during supply disruptions. The 60-day suspension allows foreign-flagged tankers to move oil between American ports, easing redistribution of existing supply. It adds no new barrels to the global market.
This is the fourth supply-side lever the administration has pulled in a week. Trump waived Russian oil sanctions on 15 March, drawing objections from six of seven G7 members and a warning from Zelenskyy that it could hand Moscow $10 billion. Treasury Secretary Bessent acknowledged that Iranian tankers were being allowed through Hormuz to "supply the rest of the world". Now Venezuela and the Jones Act. Each measure works at the margin. None addresses what US Navy officials described as an Iranian "Kill box" at Hormuz, where daily commercial transits have fallen to single digits against a pre-war average of 138. The seven-nation Hormuz statement published hours later committed no warships and set no timeline. The administration is reaching for every available lever except the one that would require either military de-escalation or the allied naval commitment no country has been willing to provide.
