Donald Trump’s energy secretary has totally sidestepped an urgent question on the very real possibility that the president’s gas price catastrophe may be about to tip over into total market armageddon.
Oil officials in Saudi Arabia projected Thursday that prices, which are already soaring fast, could further skyrocket to an eye-watering $180 a barrel if the U.S. president’s war with Iran continues beyond the end of April, the Wall Street Journal reports.
That might sound like a good thing for one of the world’s largest producers of oil. It’s not, with prices at that level likely triggering a recession, or at the very least pushing consumers to slash their fuel use to the point that even global energy giants start feeling the pain.
Trump’s top energy goon, Secretary Chris Wright, had little comfort to offer when asked about those projections during a Friday appearance on Fox.
“Yeah, Iran’s attacks have been terrifying!” he said of the Islamic regime’s response to Trump’s strikes, which have featured retaliatory attacks against U.S. military assets and oil infrastructure across the region.
“These are countries they’ve lived near for decades,” he went on. “They’re aiming at their airports, their apartment buildings, their condo buildings, their energy infrastructure. This destruction is certainly not helpful for global oil prices.”
He said that “the United States needs to finish the job to defang Iran’s ability” to carry out those strikes, and that “we’ve got to get through the period we’re in.”
Wright did not address the fact that Iran was not engaged in any of those attacks on regional oil infrastructure before the president decided to start bombing the Islamic regime at the end of February.
All available signs also now point to Trump’s new war in the Middle East ending later, rather than sooner.
In fact, reports suggest the president may be planning to further expand operations to include boots on the ground at Kharg Island, where Iran processes roughly 90 percent of its annual crude exports.
White House insiders told Axios earlier on Friday that a blockade or occupation of the facility would then be used as leverage to pressure Iran into reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that transports up to a fifth of global oil supplies.
But those insiders also warned that the United States is weeks away from being able to make that sort of move.
“We need about a month to weaken the Iranians more with strikes, take the island and then get them by the balls and use it for negotiations,” one source said.
In the event Trump does go ahead with ground operations, that would likely put the very earliest potential ceasefire at exactly the time analysts anticipate prices to hit recession-triggering levels.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Department of Energy for comment on this story.
