U.S. forces arrested Nicolás Maduro, the strongman president of Venezuela, in a consequentialraid in Caracas. The raid on Saturday is part of a “Trumpcorollary” to the Monroe Doctrine of the 1820s. TheU.S. is asserting itself across the Western Hemisphere and, Trump says, is even intending to “run” Venezuela.
If the Trump administration follows throughon this pledge to run Venezuela, it must be prepared to address the affordability issues for U.S. consumers and inflation risks for businesses and
investors that will likely arise.
The impact on oil markets and prices isclearly a concern. But the U.S. intervention in Venezuela will likely have only a modest near-term impact on crude-oil markets due to a potential global supply glut, significant spare production capacity, robust U.S. production and a well-stocked Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Diesel markets, however, are anothermatter. Venezuela and other Latin American nations play a major role in setting global and U.S. diesel prices, as Venezuela and neighboring Colombia export
heavier crude oil that is highly suitable for diesel.
Diesel prices will likely rise if thesituation in Venezuela disrupts crude production and exports. Accordingly, energy and food prices for Americans could spike — ashigher fuel costs are passed along to consumers from the diesel-intensive U.S. trucking sector, hitting rural areas especially hard.
U.S. Gulf Coast complex refineries areconfigured to process Venezuelan crude grades, and in 2024 regional refinery runs totaled roughly 8.9 million barrels per day; imports from Colombia and Venezuela accounted for about 4% of these crude inputs. While that may seem
trivial, short-run diesel price inelasticity and refinery constraints imply materially higher regional prices, especially if substitutes are costly or slow to arrive.
How deeply the U.S. intervention inVenezuela impacts diesel markets depends chiefly on how the conflict unfolds.
Intervention supporters hold thatVenezuelan oil production could rise, sending prices lower. Indeed, some studies find that Venezuela’s oil production could risesharply, under highly supportive conditions.
Commodities Corner (December 2025): Regimechange in Venezuela could bring boost in oil production — but not as much as you’d think
Still, a quick and easy campaign seemshighly improbable: The remnants of the Maduro regime have struck a defiant tone, for now, while the role of Cuban intelligence disincentivizes elite
defections. While nothing can be ruled out — includingthe possibility that U.S. troops will occupy Venezuela’soilfields for years — production is unlikely to risesharply in the near term.
In a somewhat more plausible (but stillunlikely) scenario, tensions could ease after a few months, especially if the Trump administration cuts a deal with Maduro’s vicepresident and acting successor, Delcy Rodríguez. Globalcrude prices CL00 -0.16% WBS00 -0.05% BRN00 +0.08% might remain flat as diesel crack spreads — the difference between the market price of crude oil and diesel’s wholesale price — rest above $40 a barrel,sending U.S. national retail diesel prices up by less than 5% — or about 15 cents a gallon.
In the most likely large-scale interventionscenario, however, the regime will not fold and will instead conduct a “guerrilla-style resistance.” The conflictcould not only engulf Venezuela but also escalate to Colombia via Maduro-sympathetic actors, such as the ELN terrorist group.
In this highly plausible scenario, crudeprices could rise by $5 to $8 a barrel (or about 9% to 14%). Meanwhile, the diesel crack spread could reach $50 to $60 a barrel, corresponding to a
national diesel retail price of about $4.15 to $4.50 a gallon, or 15% to 25% higher than prices of $3.60 a gallon in the week ended Dec. 15.
Significantly, Dallas Fed researchers findprice shocks in diesel can send near-term inflation higher, largely via freight-intensive goods, such as agriculture, although the magnitude and
persistence depend on duration and pass-through.
Diesel prices were already primed to risebefore the raid. U.S. total distillate inventories are forecast to end the year at multiyear lows; diesel crack spreads have risen in recent months, according to the energy consultancy RBN; and the International Energy Agency has warned
that global middle distillate markets are already supply-constrained.
Importantly, the commodity firm Kpler notesthat complex U.S. Gulf Coast refineries are already structurally short of heavier feedstocks, especially as imports from Mexico have fallen since the
ramp-up of the Dos Bocas refinery, while the inauguration of the TMX pipeline on Canada’s west coast allowed Albertan exporters toaccess Pacific refiners. U.S. national retail diesel prices will likely climb higher on the current trajectory.
The U.S. Energy Information Administrationreports that national distillate-fuel-oil consumption is overwhelmingly concentrated in the transportation industry. Trucking jobs constitute the
largest subsector in the transportation industry in the United States and are disproportionately rural. The American Trucking Association reports that more than 3.5 million professional truck drivers are employed in the sector. About 24% of truck drivers hailed from rural areas in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, while rural areas accounted for just 20% of the total U.S.
population in 2020.
Additionally, 48% of truck vehicle milestraveled (VMT) occurred in rural areas. An increase in diesel prices from a war
in Venezuela would therefore impact the trucking sector — especially in rural America.
The U.S. trucking sector is alreadyexperiencing a “freight recession,” according to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI)and would therefore be particularly impacted by a jump in diesel prices. ATRI’s 2025 survey of trucking operational costs found that marginalcosts totaled $2.26 a mile, with fuel representing 48 cents per mile of that figure. Nationwide, Class 8 trucks’ fuel economyaverages just 6.85 miles a gallon — so even smallincreases in diesel prices can impair operator profitability, especially for rural operators typically traversing longer distances.
A large-scale military intervention inVenezuela would impact some U.S. states more than others. The most distillate-intensive states tend to be geographically expansive, with large rural areas; have large extractive industrial sectors; contend with winter weather and high crosswinds or hilly terrain that worsen trucking fuel economy; and/or face cold winters that necessitate residential or commercial heating with diesel.
Instead of trying to “run the country” and attempting a risky,large-scale military intervention in Venezuela that could raise affordability concerns for Americans, the Trump administration should consider alternative, nonmilitary options that could weaken the remnants of the Maduro regime and reduce migration pressures across the Americas.
Otherwise, if diesel prices spike due tomajor, sustained outages in Latin America, diesel-reliant U.S. states and rural areas will face the highest cost.
Joseph Webster is a senior fellow at theAtlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and theIndo-Pacific Security Initiative. He also edits the independent China-Russia
Report. This article represents his personal views.