Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joins ‘Mornings with Maria’ to discuss the Iran war, rising oil prices, market volatility, Fed uncertainty, Powell’s future and the U.S. strategy to stabilize the global economy.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. government will not intervene in oil futures markets even as it tries to offset supply disruptions related to the conflict in Iran, arguing that Washington’s response will instead focus on increasing the physical availability of crude.
In an interview with Maria Bartiromo, Bessent said the government has prepared a coordinated supply response to deal with the impact of a temporary disruption around the Strait of Hormuz. He said the US has already moved to “non-sanction” Russian oil cargoes already on the water, estimated at about 130 million barrels, and could do the same with about 140 million barrels of Iranian oil in floating storage.
“Essentially, by the time we stopped approving the floating Iranian oil, we would have intervened and created about 260 million excess barrels of energy,” Bessent said, calling that a “physical intervention” rather than a financial intervention.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the key to keeping oil prices low in America is boosting oil supplies for the rest of the world. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images/Getty Images)
Bessent said the volume could help cover what he described as a temporary shortfall of 10 million to 14 million barrels per day if shipping through the strait is disrupted, providing about three weeks of market stabilization. He also pointed to a coordinated release of the 400 million barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve approved last week and said the US could again act unilaterally if necessary.
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“The largest coordinated release of SPR in history, 400 million barrels, was approved last week,” he said. “The US could unilaterally do another SPR release to keep the price down.”
Bessent framed the strategy as part of a broader effort to achieve balance pressure on Iran with the stability of the energy market. He said the US has avoided attacking Iran’s energy infrastructure even amid escalating military operations, arguing the aim is to maintain supply while maintaining pressure on Tehran.
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“We have a lot of levers,” Bessent said. “We have a lot more we can do.”
Dan Brouillette, former energy secretary under Trump, discusses whether NATO should help secure the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices, Cuba’s nationwide blackouts and more on ‘Varney & Co.’
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Supplying more oil from Iran to the world will ultimately lower prices in America, Bessent said. He noted that the U.S. is not dependent on Middle Eastern oil, but the bottleneck for oil through the Strait of Hormuz has indirectly squeezed supply and spooked crude futures markets.
