The White House said it was also “in constant coordination with the relevant agencies on this important issue.”
“President Trump and his entire energy team have had a strong game plan to keep the energy markets stable well before Operation Epic Fury began, and they will continue to review all credible options,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said.
She said, without sharing details of the plan, that “as the president said last night, this is short-term change in oil prices, which will drop dramatically once the objectives” of the Iran war are achieved.
A U.S. official separately told NBC News that Trump was reviewing a number of options to drive down prices, including restricting U.S. exports, intervening in the futures market and lifting some requirements of the Jones Act, which requires that domestic fuel be carried only on U.S.-flagged ships.
International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol also participated in the meeting, where he updated ministers about the state of energy markets, which “have deteriorated in recent days,” he said.
“In addition to the challenges of transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a substantial amount of oil production has been curtailed,” Birol said in a statement. “This is creating significant and growing risks for the market.”
European Union Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis also said late Monday that European ministers did not have an agreement to release stockpiles, either, but that they would continue to evaluate the situation.
“One of the options which is considered is … the release of oil reserves to supply, to provide more oil supply during this disruption,” he told reporters earlier in Brussels.
The storage question
Several countries have trimmed oil output since the war started, including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and reportedly Saudi Arabia. Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil company, did not reply to requests for comment.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which more than 20% of the world’s daily oil demand flows, remains essentially closed to tankers. Ships near the strait, off southern Iran, have reported receiving threats over radio transmissions. The British maritime trade agency has also reported multiple attacks on or near ships in the region.
Storage has also started to reach its capacity in the region.
“With export bottlenecks unresolved and storage continuing to tighten, a further acceleration in regional supply cuts appears increasingly likely in the coming days,” commodities analysts at JPMorgan Chase wrote Friday.
“By next Friday, we estimate that more than 4 [million barrels per day] of production will need to be curtailed.” Already, they said, about 2 million barrels per day have been cut.
So far, no country has fully shut down oil production, but analysts warn that could be next.
“If producers beyond Iraq and Kuwait are forced to curtail output, the ability to restore pre‑crisis supply quickly would become increasingly constrained,” analysts at Societé Generale said in a note to clients Monday morning. “Time is therefore critical: the longer disruptions persist, the greater the likelihood that what initially appear to be temporary outages evolve into more durable supply losses.”
“The UAE is likely the next producer at risk of shutting in output, potentially within the next five to seven days,” they wrote. “Qatar is also vulnerable.”
All four of those countries rank among the top five oil-producing countries in OPEC. Iran also makes the top five, but given U.S. sanctions, most of its oil ends up in China.
Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng plan to meet this week, according to multiple reports.
