Thursday on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration “may unsanction” about 140 million barrels of Iranian oil.
Bessent said, “So we are not attacking their energy infrastructure on Kharg Island, which is the nexus—90% of Iranian oil comes out of there. We did a precision strike against all the military targets on that island, and none of the energy assets were targeted. So we have allowed Iranian oil to continue out of the Gulf, where some Indian tankers have moved out and some Chinese tankers that moved out. We, and Maria, to be clear, this is a coordinated effort. We had a break glass plan across the administration and Treasury. We unsanctioned Russian oil. We knew that there were about 130 million barrels on the water, and we created supply that is beyond the Strait of Hormuz.”
He continued, “So we anticipated this. We knew there could be a temporary—and I want to emphasize temporary—chokepoint there, and there was 130 million barrels of floating storage. In the coming days, we may unsanction the Iranian oil that’s on the water. It’s about 140 million barrels. So, depending on how you count it, that’s 10 days to two weeks of supply that the Iranians had been pushing out. That would have all gone to China. In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days as we continue this campaign. So we have lots of levers.”
Bessent added, “We’ve got plenty more that we can do. The largest coordinated SPR release in history—400 million barrels—was approved last week, and some countries are going to do more. The U.S. could unilaterally do another SPR release to keep the price down. As you will have noted, WTI and its European counterpart Brent have substantially diverged over the past few trading sessions. They were trading right on top of each other last week, and this is because the U.S., thanks to President Trump in his first term and the continuing efforts here, is virtually energy independent. When President Trump says our allies should join us in a coalition along the Strait of Hormuz, they’re the ones who need this oil. The U.S.—we’re an oil exporter.”
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