President Donald Trump once pledged his incoming “energy dominance” team would bring about a golden age of American prosperity and global peace.
Now, 15 months later, the Trump administration’s self-described “Tiger Team” led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright appears flummoxed by the surge in global oil prices in the wake of the U.S. attack on Iran and is scrambling to head off a bout of energy-driven inflation.
Burgum has hewed to the White House line that the energy pain would be temporary, even as White House aides say he’s caused eye-rolling among staff amid his media appearances and trips to events like Rupert Murdoch’s birthday party. Wright’s efforts to reassure markets that oil supplies remain ample have fallen flat, and the Energy Department quickly deleted a market-churning social media post that erroneously claimed U.S. warships had escorted an oil tanker through the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz.
Energy experts say the administration underestimated the oil impacts from launching the war, which, despite near-record U.S. crude production, has sent gasoline prices at the pump up 60 cents a gallon in less than two weeks. The early messaging that global energy markets would cool in time as Iran’s threat to Strait of Hormuz shipping waned has been replaced Wednesday by its agreement that dozens of countries should release up to 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic stockpiles.
