US monitoring Israel-Iran attacks' impact on global energy supply
WASHINGTON: US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Friday he and his team are working with the White House's National Security Council to monitor the situation in the Middle East and any potential impacts to global energy supply.
Wright said on X, after Israel's strikes on Iran's nuclear sites and Iran's response of missiles on Israel, that President Donald Trump's policy of maximizing US oil and gas output, which also involves slashing pollution regulations, has boosted US energy security.
Oil and gas sites in Iran, an OPEC member, have not been targeted, analysts have said.
Global crude oil prices spiked on Friday, settling 7 per cent higher at more than US$74 per barrel on investor worries about conflict spreading to the wider Middle East.
And US gasoline prices could rise about 20 cents a gallon in coming days during peak US summer driving season "creating economic pressures and political headwinds for President Donald Trump, who campaigned on lowering energy costs," analysts at ClearView Energy Partners said in a note to clients.
ClearView said higher prices could push Trump to focus on tapping strategic petroleum reserves, seeking supply additions from the OPEC+ production group, and could complicate efforts to tighten sanctions on Russia, one of the world's top three oil producers.
The US Energy Department did not immediately respond to a question about the potential to tap the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the world's largest, which currently holds 402.1 million barrels of crude.
Fatih Birol, the head of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, said on X that the IEA oil security system, which includes the US SPR, has more than 1.2 billion barrels of emergency stocks.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries slammed Birol's post, saying on X it raises false alarms and "projects a sense of market fear." --REUTERS
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