Oil prices rise after 4-year low: What Trump has to do with it
Wed, December 17, 2025 at 10:35 AM EST
In this video:
Crude oil (CL=F, BZ=F) prices hit their lowest level since 2021 on Tuesday but have since rebounded during Wednesday's trading session. This comes as President Trump ordered a blockade of oil tankers from entering and leaving Venezuela.
Yahoo Finance Breaking Business News Reporter Jake Conley joins Market Catalysts host Julie Hyman to explain what's driving oil's recent price action.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Catalysts.
Video Transcript
00:00
Julie
Let's turn to the oil market because oil is rebounding after hitting its lowest level since 2021. Crude prices did drop below $55 a barrel on Tuesday. And this coming as President Trump is ordering a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. Yahoo Finance's Jake Conley has been tracking all of this. Jake, you were talk I mean, just yesterday we were talking about the prices below since 2021. And now President Trump um, kind of changing the calculation. Look, what effect does this have? Talk us through it.
00:43
Jake Conley
Yeah, so you look at prices this morning. WTI, the US benchmark is up about 1.3% after a 2% jump. Brent, the international benchmark, same thing. Clearly a reversal from a 3% nearly drop yesterday. Inciting incident here is the blockade. Whether it's going to have an impact, I think it's going to have to play out over the next few days, but you look at this in the US, obviously a bit of a jump on US oil prices, but Venezuela only accounts for about 1% of the US's oil imports. So really not a big factor in the US market.
01:21
Jake Conley
Globally, it's also sitting on the biggest proved reserves in the world. It's not a huge global exporter though. So again, whether this is going to have a long tail, I think is hard to say.
01:34
Julie
And and do we know of the tankers coming in and out of Venezuela, like how many of them are sanctioned by, you know, when we talk about sanctioned, we're talking about what? Russia primarily or what
01:50
Jake Conley
These are tankers that have been involved in the Iranian trade, some with Russia, some with China. It it kind of depends, but you're looking at a bit over 100 roughly for the amount of tankers who are probably going to be affected by this. In the last couple days, we have already seen four tankers headed for Venezuela turning around in the middle of the ocean and going back. One of those was sanctioned, three of them were not. So what you're seeing is even companies who aren't covered under sanctions are already saying, I don't know if I want to take this risk of ship cargo crew. Maybe it's not worth it.
02:22
Julie
But to your to your point, like the the broader and you and I've been talking about this in recent days, the broader supply demand picture is not positive for oil prices. It's good for people driving and wanting lower gas prices. Um, so how do we figure out how whether this fundamentally shifts that picture? And obviously we don't know for how long either.
02:45
Jake Conley
Mhm. Yeah, this this is why I say it's hard to stay with the long tail of the Venezuela news is going to be because the dominant market narrative, Julie, you're right, is that huge wave of over supply that's coming down the pipe. The IEA has that pegged at about 3.8 million barrels a day next year, which is going to push prices if you look at street picks down into the 50s, if OPEC doesn't stop producing, maybe even down to the 40s or 30s, which would have a real hit globally and here in the US on shale producers.
03:22
Jake Conley
Whether the Venezuela news really has an impact is going to depend on what comes next. Because this is an aggressive step forward. A couple weeks ago, the US um turned back a crude tanker heading to Venezuela. A week ago, they seized one. Now with this blockade, whether this has that long tail, again, is really going to depend on what this signals to the market about US aggression, but that dominant narrative is going to remain the over supply and just this huge supply demand imbalance we're looking at.
03:55
Julie
When we see an uptick, I mean it's just one day, but if we see an uptick, how how quickly does that translate into US prices at the pump? Like what should we be watching for there or are they pretty are they going to remain pretty low?
04:12
Jake Conley
It's hard to say exactly how fast it'll show up, but if you look at gasoline prices in the US, the oil price makes up about 40 to 50% of that. So any meaningful jump will have an impact. How quickly that ripples out versus how much the market kind of adapts and says, okay, there's no tail here, prices are going to go back down. very hard to say.
04:36
Jake Conley
but it could have an impact, especially if prices stay a bit inflated. However, you talk to any analyst on the street, pretty much unanimously they're looking for prices to drop in the next few months. So what the pump impact is, very hard to tell right now.
04:56
Julie
Yeah, we'll just be watching as those events unfold in Venezuela. Thanks, Jake. appreciate it.
05:01
Jake Conley
Thanks Julie.
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