On Thursday, President Donald Trump posted a Wall Street Journal headline on his social media site: “More oil is now flowing out of the Persian Gulf than before the Iran war.” While that is indeed what the Wall Street Journal used as the headline in its recent report, the president did not link to the article or provide additional information beyond that. “Middle East oil flows, including shipments through Hormuz and other routes in the region, averaged more than 24 million barrels per day in the week ended October 18, surpassing pre-war levels of 23.3 million barrels per day,” the report said.
These details reveal a difference of about 700,000 barrels of oil, which is indeed a large amount of oil, but only 3% more than the 23.3 million barrels of oil that existed before Israel and the United States launched war against Iran on February 28. So we’re basically back to where we were before the battle started.
Regardless, it doesn’t appear that this 3% increase will lead to lower oil prices any time soon. According to the New York Times, the international oil benchmark Brent crude oil price reached more than $117 per barrel on Friday, the highest level since April and close to the highest level since the war began. Despite Trump’s desperate attempts to lower diesel costs, which hit an all-time high of $6.52 per gallon on September 22, the average price was $6.31 per gallon as of Friday. The average price for regular unleaded gasoline is about $4.29 per gallon.
Among other moves, Trump has slashed rules for truckers, provided $8 billion in relief to farmers and struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to ease fuel sanctions, a move that critics say may be illegal. The first shipment of Russian oil departed from a U.S.-bound tanker on Friday
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Experts say none of this is expected to change oil costs anytime soon. “The president tends to downplay long-term losses over short-term gains, and I’m skeptical that there are any short-term gains to be made here,” Chris Borick, a pollster and political scientist at Penn State’s Muhlenberg College, told Reuters on Friday.
Meanwhile, fighting in the Middle East continues, with at least seven commercial tankers damaged by Iranian attacks or mines in the Strait of Hormuz in one night alone, possibly the highest number of ships damaged in a single day in the waterway since the war began.
But the war doesn’t seem to be over yet. In fact, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, said that U.S. relations with Iran may still be deadlocked a year from now. “The president and the US Navy can maintain this blockade,” Walz told the Financial Times in an interview on Friday. [on Iranian ports] “For the foreseeable future,” he added, the Trump administration was “tightening” economic pressure on Iran. “I’m not going to make assumptions. People hope they can come to the table in a meaningful way before then,” Walz said.
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