WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. companies will be allowed to do business with Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company after the Treasury Department eased sanctions, with some limitations, on Wednesday as the Trump administration looks for ways to boost global oil supplies during the Iran war.

The Treasury issued a broad authorization allowing Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, to directly sell Venezuelan oil to U.S. companies and on global markets, a massive shift after Washington for years had largely blocked dealings with Venezuela’s government and its oil sector.

Separately, the White House said President Donald Trump would waive, for 60 days, Jones Act requirements for goods shipped between U.S. ports to be moved on U.S.-flagged vessels. The 1920s law, designed to protect the American shipbuilding sector, is often blamed for making gas more expensive.

The moves highlight the increased pressure that the Republican administration is under to ease soaring oil prices as the United States, along with Israel, wages war with Iran. Global oil prices have since spiked as Iran halted traffic through the narrow Strait of Hormuzthrough which one-fifth of the world’s oil typically passes.

Drivers in the United States are paying the highest pump prices in about 2 1/2 years. The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline topped $3.84 on Wednesday, according to AAA, compared with $2.98 before the war began on Feb. 28.

Even before that, voters were worried about higher living costs, and fuel prices are now adding to concerns for Republicans heading into the election season with their control of Congress at stake in November.

“Gas prices are up and we know they’re up. And we know that people are hurting because of it. And we’re doing everything that we can to ensure that they stay lower,” Vice President JD Vance said at an event in Auburn Hills, Michigan. “This is a temporary blip.”

Easing sanctions could spur US investment in Venezuela

The Treasury’s license is designed to incentivize investment in Venezuela’s energy sector and is intended to benefit both the U.S. and Venezuela, while increasing the global oil supply, a Treasury official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Since the ouster and arrest of Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s president during a U.S. military operation in January, Trump has said the U.S. would effectively “run” Venezuela and sell its oil.

The U.S. license provides targeted relief from sanctions, but does not lift the penalties altogether. The license allows companies that existed before Jan. 29, 2025, to buy Venezuelan oil and engage in transactions that would normally be banned under American sanctions.

But in the short term, there is not likely to be much impact on U.S. gas prices, said Geoff Ramsey, an expert on Latin America at the Atlantic Council think tank.

“We’re talking about 12 to 18 months before we see dramatic changes in Venezuelan output,” Ramsey said in an interview.

Easing sanctions and waiving Jones Act requirements normally would have significant impacts on gas prices, said Claudio Galimberti, Rystad Energy’s chief economist. “But we are in the most abnormal market I can remember,” Galimberti said in an interview.

He said he expects hostilities between the U.S., Israel and Iran to last at least two or three more weeks, and said prices are likely to be high and volatile until oil and gas traffic resumes through the Strait of Hormuz. “As long as the strait remains shut, we’re going to have a crisis,” Galimberti said.

Closer to home, Trump is waiving shipping restrictions

Gas prices in some parts of the country, such as the mid-Atlantic region, may see some relief from Trump’s waiver of the Jones Act, which will allow larger ships to move between U.S. ports, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president for energy and innovation at the University of Houston.

“Places like Texas and Chicago are unlikely to feel any change in the price of gasoline and diesel because of the Jones Act waiver,” Krishnamoorti said. He said some American shippers may now face more competition from the relaxation of shipping rules, which could mean higher costs for them.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Jones Act waiver would help “mitigate the short-term disruptions to the oil market” during the Iran war and would “allow vital resources like oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and coal to flow freely to U.S. ports.”

Last week, Trump announced that he would tap the strategic petroleum reservepart of a wider agreement with many of the world’s wealthiest countries to draw oil from emergency stockpiles.

The administration also eased sanctions on certain Russian oil shipments for 30 days. Next week, Vance and other administration officials are expected to meet with the main oil industry group, the American Petroleum Institute, to discuss energy markets and production, the group’s spokesperson Andrea Woods said.

The waiver of the Jones Act rules might only save consumers three or four cents per gallon, said David Goldwyn, a former Obama-era State Department special envoy focused on energy

“We’re talking about pennies, Goldwyn said.

All told, the administration’s market tweaks will create some “buffers” for price hikes, at least until late May, Goldwyn said. The big risk for consumers is if the Hormuz Strait remains closed beyond that point. “Then the shortfall will increase significantly,” he said.

Critics are worried about the impact of easing Venezuela sanctions

The Treasury license is expected to give a massive boost to Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy and help encourage companies that have been apprehensive to invest. There are some limits. Payments cannot go directly to sanctioned Venezuelan entities such as PDVSA, but must be sent instead to a special U.S.-controlled account. In other words, the U.S. will allow the oil trade but will control the cash flow.

Additionally, deals involving Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and some Chinese entities will not be allowed. Transactions involving Venezuelan debt or bonds will not be allowed. The new license does not allow payments in gold or cryptocurrency, including the petro, which was a crypto token issued by the Venezuelan government in 2018.

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves and used them to power what was once Latin America’s strongest economy. But corruption, mismanagement and U.S. economic sanctions saw production steadily decline from the 3.5 million barrels per day pumped in 1999, when Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chaveztook power, to less than 400,000 barrels per day in 2020.

A year earlier, the Treasury Department under the first Trump administration locked Venezuela out of world oil markets when it sanctioned PDVSA as part of a policy punishing Maduro’s government for corruption. That forced the government to sell its remaining oil output at a discount — about 40% below market prices — to buyers such as China. Venezuela even started accepting payments in Russian rublesbartered goods or cryptocurrency.

Critics of the acting Venezuelan government argue that the move rewards Maduro loyalists, while repression, corruption and human rights abuses continue.

Many public sector workers survive on roughly $160 per month, while the average private sector employee earned about $237 last year, when the annual inflation rate soared to 475%, according to Venezuela’s central bank, and sent the cost of food beyond what many can afford.

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Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela. Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Michelle L. Price and Matt Daly contributed to this report.

The World Anti-Doping Agency on Tuesday put off a decision about barring government officials from major sporting events if their countries voluntarily withhold dues, pushing a potential conflict with President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials until at least after this summer’s World Cup.

The WADA executive committee met and said it would consider the new rule in September, two months after the end of the World Cup, which the U.S. is hosting along with Canada and Mexico.

If such a rule is adopted later this yearit would presumably go into effect before the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

The U.S. hasn’t paid its dues since 2023. If that continues, the new rule could place Trump and U.S. lawmakers on a banned list for Games in their own country, though there are doubts about whether an anti-doping regulator could keep any of them from attending the Olympics.

Conflict with WADA has not been a particularly partisan issue in the U.S., which withheld the payments in 2024 and 2025 — once during Trump’s presidency and once during Joe Biden’s.

The U.S. has withheld $7.3 million over the two years in protest of WADA’s handling of a case involving Chinese swimmers and other issues.

WADA spokesman James Fitzgerald previously told The Associated Press the proposed rule would “not (be) applied retroactively so World Cup, LA and SLC Games would not be covered.”

However, the proposal, a copy of which was obtained by AP, did not include language to that effect and Fitzgerald did not respond to multiple emails seeking clarification about his use of the word “retroactively.”

After the meeting Tuesday, WADA director general Olivier Niggli said “the withholding of contributions by governments for political or other voluntary reasons remains a serious topic of concern for all WADA’s stakeholders.”

“Funding instability has a direct effect on the functioning and development of the World Anti-Doping Program,” Niggli said. “Ultimately, those who are most directly and most negatively impacted are athletes around the world.”

WADA started exploring the issue in 2020, around the time the U.S. began threatening to withhold money. But it says the issue of penalizing governments for not paying is not directly related to the United States.

A U.S. representative on the executive committee during the Biden administration — drug czar Rahul Gupta — led the effort to reject the proposal in 2024.

The U.S. has since lost its spot on the committee. The proposal emerged again earlier this year, and in correspondence with European decision-makers, a copy of which was obtained by AP, WADA told them such a measure could be adopted “without undue delay.”

The Europeans also asked WADA why the executive committee was taking up the issue again before a working group had finished its analysis.

A decision by the executive committee would have to be ratified by the WADA foundation board. Its next meeting is in November, though in the February letter to the Europeans, WADA said that board could meet sooner.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to restore the government-run Voice of America’s operations after it had effectively been shut down a year ago, putting hundreds of employees who have been on administrative leave back to work.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth gave the U.S. Agency for Global Media a week to put together a plan for putting Voice of America on the air. It has been operating with a skeleton staff since President Donald Trump issued an executive order to shut it down.

A week ago, Lamberth said Kari Lake, who had been Trump’s choice to lead the agency, did not have the legal authority to do what she had done at Voice of America. In Tuesday’s decision, Lamberth ruled on the actions she had taken to respond to Trump’s order, essentially shelving 1,042 of VOA’s 1,147 employees.

“Defendants have provided nothing approaching a principled basis for their decision,” Lamberth wrote.

There was no immediate comment on the decision by the agency overseeing Voice of America. Lake had denounced Lamberth’s March 7 ruling, saying it would be appealed. Since then, Trump nominated Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, to run USAGM. That requires Senate approval, a step that was not taken with Lake.

Patsy Widakuswara, Voice of America’s White House bureau chief and a plaintiff in the lawsuit to restore it, said she is deeply grateful for the decision.

“We are eager to begin repairing the damage Kari Lake has inflicted on our agency and our colleagues, to return to our congressional mandate, and to rebuild the trust of the global audience we have been unable to serve for the past year,” she said.

“We know the road to restoring VOA’s operations and reputation will be long and difficult,” she said. “We hope the American people will continue to support our mission to produce journalism, not propaganda.”

Voice of America has transmitted news coverage to countries around the world since its formation in World War II, often in countries with no tradition of a free press. Before Trump’s executive order, VOA had operated in 49 different languages, broadcasting to 362 million people.