India, Aug. 31 -- US President Donald Trump has announced a sweeping new energy agreement with Venezuela that could hand American companies access to tens of billions of barrels of crude oil, in what he has described as one of the largest such deals in history, though analysts caution that any relief at the petrol pump is unlikely to arrive quickly.

The agreement, confirmed over the weekend, targets roughly 65 billion barrels of crude across seventeen oil fields in a country that holds the largest proven reserves on the planet. Coming months after the ousting of former president Nicolas Maduro, the deal marks one of the clearest signs yet of Washington's ambitions to reshape its relationship with Caracas's vast, long-underused oil wealth...