When might the release from the US strategic oil reserve affect gas prices?

Industry experts remain skeptical over how this will ease longer-term pressures.

The White House announcement Tuesday that the U.S is taking the rare step of releasing oil from the nation's strategic reserve in an attempt to lower gas prices comes as inflation-battered Americans are feeling the pinch at the pump ahead of Thanksgiving travel.

While the news could bring relief of five to 15 cents per gallon in the coming days and weeks, industry experts told ABC News, they remain skeptical about whether the move will ease longer-term pressures in the oil market and concerned over how oil producers could punitively respond.

The announcement that the U.S. will disperse 50 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- a complex of four sites with deep underground storage caverns created in salt domes along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts -- comes as gas prices hover near a seven-year-high for this time of year, largely due to supply-demand imbalances wrought by the pandemic. The White House is taking action, meanwhile, amid soaring gas prices seen as hurting President Joe Biden's approval ratings.

"It's very much political," Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at the fuel price-tracking site GasBuddy, told ABC News of the release. "We've never used the Strategic Petroleum Reserve merely to to bring prices down."