Energy Secretary Says No Guarantees Oil Prices Will Drop Soon

Two weeks into the largest oil supply disruption in modern history, the man tasked with steering America's energy policy conceded on Sunday what markets already knew: nobody can promise when prices will come down.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright made the rounds on all three major Sunday news shows on March 15, delivering a message that blended cautious optimism with unavoidable candor. "There's no guarantees in wars at all," Wright told ABC's This Week [2]. On NBC's Meet the Press, he acknowledged that "Americans are feeling it right now" and "will feel it for a few more weeks" [1]. And when host Kristen Welker pressed him on whether oil could reach $200 per barrel, Wright conspicuously declined to rule it out [13].

The statements mark the starkest admission yet from a senior Trump administration official that the economic pain triggered by Operation Epic Fury — the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran that began on February 28 — may not be as short-lived as the White House has publicly insisted.

The Price Shock in Numbers

The numbers tell a dramatic story. WTI crude oil, which traded at roughly $67 per barrel on February 27 — the day before strikes began — closed above $103 on Friday, March 14 [3]. That represents a surge of more than 50% in just over two weeks. At its most volatile, Brent crude briefly touched nearly $120 per barrel before retreating [15].

Source: FRED / U.S. Energy Information Administration

Data as of Mar 11, 2026CSV

At the pump, the national average gasoline price has climbed from $2.94 per gallon one month ago to $3.70 as of March 14 — a 76-cent increase that amounts to roughly $912 per year in additional fuel costs for the average American household [1]. Diesel prices have jumped even more sharply, rising 32% since the war began, with cascading effects on shipping and freight costs that have yet to fully reach consumer prices [1]. California, burdened by its unique regulatory environment and recent refinery closures, has seen prices exceed $5.34 per gallon [1].

The Hormuz Bottleneck

The source of the crisis is geographic and strategic. The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, is the chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world's oil supply flows daily. Since the war began, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps has made the passage effectively impassable, carrying out projectile attacks on tankers and vowing that "not a litre of oil" would transit the strait [3].

Wright himself confirmed the severity of the situation on Meet the Press: asked whether the Strait of Hormuz is safe for shipping, he said flatly, "No, no it is not" [5]. He added that the U.S. Navy is "not ready" to begin escorting tankers through the strait, with "all of our military assets right now focused on destroying Iran's offensive capabilities" [5]. While Wright suggested naval escorts could begin by the end of March, that timeline would still leave the world's most critical oil chokepoint shuttered for at least a month — a scenario that has no precedent in modern energy markets.

The International Energy Agency has declared the disruption the largest in recorded history, exceeding both the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in its scope [9]. Approximately 15 million barrels per day of crude and refined products that would normally transit the strait have been rerouted, delayed, or simply stuck [9].

The Administration's Balancing Act

Wright's Sunday appearances revealed an administration caught between its desire to project confidence and the reality of a conflict it cannot fully control. On one hand, the Energy Secretary predicted the war would "certainly come to an end in the next few weeks" and said there's "a very good chance" gas prices could drop below $3 per gallon by summer [4][1]. On the other, he repeatedly hedged those forecasts with the phrase "no guarantees," acknowledging the fundamental uncertainty of wartime economics [2].

The tension was most evident when Wright made the case that the conflict would ultimately benefit American energy consumers. "We'll go to a world more abundant in energy, more affordable in energy, and less risky for American soldiers and commerce in the Middle East," he said [1]. It was an argument that required Americans to look past the present pain — a tall order when prices are climbing daily.

The administration has not been idle. President Trump authorized the release of 172 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the largest single drawdown in the reserve's history, as part of a coordinated IEA effort totaling 400 million barrels across member nations [9]. But analysts have been blunt about its limitations. Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow at Chatham House, said the release "will not make a large material difference" given the scale of the supply disruption [9]. The math is unforgiving: 400 million barrels spread over several months amounts to a few million barrels per day — a fraction of the approximately 15 million barrels per day normally flowing through Hormuz.

Source: GDELT Project

Data as of Mar 15, 2026CSV

OPEC's Measured Response

The response from OPEC+ has been similarly restrained. The cartel agreed to a production increase of just 206,000 barrels per day for April — a figure that fell well below the 400,000 to 500,000 bpd some analysts had urged [10]. Saudi Arabia had quietly ramped up output by roughly 500,000 bpd in the weeks before the war, but even the kingdom's spare capacity — among the largest in the world — cannot come close to offsetting the Hormuz shutdown [10].

The modest increase reflected a practical reality: even if OPEC+ members could pump more oil, much of it would face the same shipping bottleneck as everyone else. Gulf producers Saudi Arabia and the UAE are themselves dependent on the Strait of Hormuz for their exports, creating a perverse situation in which the producers with the most spare capacity face the greatest logistical obstacles to getting it to market.

'Drill, Baby, Drill' Meets Geopolitical Reality

The administration's longer-term strategy — ramping up domestic U.S. production through deregulation and expanded federal leasing — has also run into the wall of wartime reality. The U.S. already produces a record 13.7 million barrels of oil per day, making it the world's largest producer [6]. But experts are nearly unanimous that "drill, baby, drill" cannot solve a crisis of this magnitude or speed.

New oil wells take months or years to bring online, not weeks [6]. And U.S. producers, many of whom are publicly traded companies answerable to shareholders demanding capital discipline, have shown little appetite for rapid production increases — even with prices above $100 per barrel. The shale revolution made America an energy superpower, but it did not make American consumers immune to a global supply shock.

"The fundamental issue is that U.S. gas prices are inseparable from the global oil market," noted CNN's analysis of the situation. "Even though the U.S. is the biggest exporter of oil globally, it can't make up for the standstill of oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz" [6].

The Recession Question

Economists are increasingly sounding alarm bells. Goldman Sachs has raised its probability of a U.S. recession this year by 5 percentage points to 25%, increased its 2026 inflation forecast by 0.8 points to 2.9%, and trimmed its GDP growth projection by 0.3 points to 2.2% [7]. Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi has estimated that every sustained $10-per-barrel increase in oil prices costs the typical American household an additional $450 per year [7].

Oxford Economics has modeled a scenario in which global oil prices averaging $140 per barrel for two months would tip the world economy into a mild recession, shrinking global GDP by 0.7% and pushing the UK, Eurozone, and Japan into contraction [7]. Rystad Energy has estimated that Brent could reach $135 per barrel if the Hormuz crisis persists for four months [15]. Deutsche Bank has modeled a worst case in which a full, prolonged closure sends prices toward $200 [15].

The danger is not just the direct cost of fuel. Higher energy prices cascade through every sector of the economy — raising the cost of manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and heating. They act as a regressive tax, hitting lower-income households hardest. And they complicate the Federal Reserve's already delicate task of managing inflation, potentially forcing the central bank to delay interest rate cuts that markets had been counting on.

Political Fallout

The political dimensions of the crisis are impossible to ignore in a midterm election year. Democrats have seized on rising gas prices as proof that the war was a strategic blunder. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called on Trump to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — which the president eventually did — while framing the crisis as one of the administration's own making [11]. "He said he was going to bring gas down," one Trump voter in Florida told Fortune, capturing a sentiment that Republican strategists are watching with growing unease [12].

The anxiety is bipartisan. The Washington Post reported that the oil price spike is fueling Republican anxieties about the midterms, with some GOP lawmakers privately questioning whether the administration's assurances of a short conflict are realistic [11]. Axios reported that gas prices are hitting hardest in 2026 Senate battleground states, adding urgency to the political calculus [11].

Trump himself has dismissed the price increases as "a little glitch," but his own Energy Secretary's hedging suggests the administration knows the situation is more precarious than that framing implies [12].

What Comes Next

Wright's most consequential statement on Sunday may have been his timeline for naval escorts through the Strait of Hormuz. If the Navy can begin shepherding tankers by the end of March — a goal Wright called "quite likely" but not certain — it would represent the first concrete step toward restoring even partial oil flows through the world's most critical maritime chokepoint [5].

But even escorted transits would carry enormous risk, and shipping companies and their insurers may not immediately trust the route. The precedent of the 1987-88 "Tanker War" — when the U.S. Navy escorted Kuwaiti tankers through the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War — saw multiple vessels damaged by mines despite the military presence.

In the meantime, the world is burning through its emergency reserves at an unprecedented rate, OPEC+ is constrained by the same geography that created the crisis, and the administration's promises of post-war energy abundance remain exactly that — promises.

Wright said it best himself, in a moment of candor that cut through the Sunday-show spin: "There's no guarantees in wars at all." For American consumers paying a dollar more per gallon than they were three weeks ago, that uncertainty is already painfully real.