Washington DC; September 2026: US President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet the executives from oil companies at the White House today (Tuesday – 01st September 2026; Local Time) and their discussion will focus in large part on reducing gasoline prices, the White House said today.
The meeting looks like it’s part of an ongoing effort by Trump administration officials and other Republican policymakers to address voters’ concerns about affordability ahead of this year’s midterm elections, which are now two months away.
Trump is huddling with executives from oil refiners to “discuss options on lower gasoline prices”, said Chris Krueger, an analyst and managing director at TD Cowen’s Washington Research Group, in a note. That’s as several recent Trump announcements and some House of Representatives hearings this week “signal a shift in the GOP affordability message aimed at voters” in November, Krueger added.
Many analysts have been predicting defeats for candidates from Trump’s Republican Party in the midterms due to voters’ frustrations with paying more at the pump, as well as for groceries, utilities and other essentials. Democrats have an 89% chance of ending Republican control of the House in November’s midterms, along with a 51% likelihood of flipping the Senate, according to figures from prediction market Polymarket. (Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of MarketWatch.) Midterm elections have been bruising for most modern presidents.
Trump is “laser-focused on ensuring his successful energy-dominance agenda translates into the most cost savings possible at the pump for consumers”, said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers in a statement. “As part of that commitment, the President will meet with industry leaders to collaborate on the best ways to increase refining capacity, further unleash American energy dominance across the entire supply chain, and bring down prices for the American people”.
A mix of small, medium and large refiners and distributors are expected to participate in Tuesday’s meeting, according to a White House official. The Trump administration has been tapping the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help push down gasoline prices, which climbed this year due to disruptions in the Middle East since Trump launched his war on Iran six months ago.
On Sunday, Trump said in a social-media post that he would use Venezuelan crude oil to “fill up” the SPR, adding that the process “will begin very shortly”. That’s after the president announced a deal with Venezuela last Friday (28th August 2026) saying the US would help develop 17 of the South American country’s oil fields containing 65 billion barrels of proven reserves.
But analysts have expressed doubts about relying on heavy Venezuelan crude for the SPR, which is set up largely to store what’s known as light, sweet crude. The “practical mechanism” for using future Venezuelan output to replenish the SPR “is not yet clear, given differences in crude quality and storage requirements”, UBS strategists said in a note. The SPR’s level has fallen to a 44-year low in the wake of drawdowns by the Trump administration and the Biden administration.
UBS said the US-Venezuela deal is “strategically significant”, but added it’s unlikely to change the outlook for the oil market in the near term in part because the market’s dominant driver is disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz, a key Mideast shipping route. Also, Venezuelan production gains will take years to achieve, and the durability of the deal which is legally and politically uncertain, they noted.
New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, and London-traded Brent crude futures each rose more than 2% on Monday, and are poised to end August with gains of 1% and 3%, respectively. Analysts attributed Monday’s advance to the US and Iran exchanging fire for the first time in a month. The average national price for gasoline stands at about $4.08 per gallon in the US, up from $3.19 a year ago, according to AAA data.
Team Maverick.
