{"id":4172,"date":"2026-07-25T08:10:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T08:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4172"},"modified":"2026-07-25T08:10:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T08:10:28","slug":"trump-has-no-remaining-levers-to-pull-as-oil-hovers-near-the-100-psychological-threshold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4172","title":{"rendered":"Trump has no remaining levers to pull as oil hovers near the $100 \u2018psychological\u2019 threshold"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With global oil and fuel emergency reserves already dwindled and fighting spreading to the Red Sea\u2014Saudi Arabia\u2019s alternative outlet for oil exports\u2014the concern is the U.S. faces either escalation or capitulation, energy and geopolitical analysts said. That means expanding the military operation to include so-called boots on the ground or ceding the now-infamous Strait of Hormuz to Iran to control and charge de-facto tolls, called service or administrative fees in a thinly veiled effort to avoid violating international maritime laws.<\/p>\n

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The big question now is whether Trump\u2014after some short-term period of escalation\u2014will choose the so-called \u201cTACO\u201d route, said Dan Pickering, founder of the\u00a0Pickering\u00a0Energy Partners consulting and research firm.\u00a0The \u201cTrump Always Chickens Out\u201d term was coined last year after Trump repeatedly backed down from higher tariffs and other threats. And market sentiments remain that something will likely have to give well before the November midterm elections.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou either \u2018TACO\u2019 or you turn up the heat\u2014and things get worse before they get better,\u201d Pickering told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cIf you think that the midterms are the pressure point, doing something that influences price and sentiment in the short run just looks challenging.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the interim peace deal was shredded and the military conflict escalated earlier this month, oil prices rapidly rose back above $100 per barrel\u2014before dipping back below on Friday\u2014after the Yemeni Houthis opened fire on two Saudi Arabian oil tankers in the Red Sea\u2019s Bab el-Mandeb strait.<\/p>\n

The U.S.\u2014and the rest of the world\u2014has depleted most of its emergency reserves; a gas tax holiday is unlikely because it requires approval from a splintered Congress; U.S. oil producers and refiners already are churning out products near all-time highs; and the administration has already waived the Jones Act\u2014allowing allow more ships to move fuel from the U.S. Gulf Coast to the more barren West and East coasts. Elsewhere, China already has dramatically decreased its oil imports\u2014keeping prices from spiraling near record highs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of these things have already been put in place in round one,\u201d Pickering said. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of other demand levers that you can pull.\u201d<\/p>\n

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If both the Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz are nearly shuttered, Pickering said, the oil price could easily rise in August back near the late-April high of $124 per barrel. Already, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in the U.S. is back above $4.10 and rising.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we wind up with a de-facto closure of the strait and this Houthi threat shuts down the Red Sea, then I think it gets bad pretty fast during August,\u201d Pickering said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have multiple months because we\u2019re already starting from a tougher spot.\u00a0It\u2019s going to be on us pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And a flashing $100 oil signal is adding more pressure, he said, even if there\u2019s a negligible physical difference from $99 per barrel. \u201cTriple-digit [oil] is bringing people out of the woodworks. It makes people pay attention. There\u2019s this psychological barrier of triple-digit oil prices that signals more significant problems than a $93 oil price.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Iran perspective<\/h2>\n

Iran now sees itself operating from a position of leverage and strength, showing a willingness to kill the interim peace deal and draw out the conflict, even having sustained immense losses to its leadership and economy.<\/p>\n

Read more Anthropic\u2019s head of economics just explained why we haven\u2019t seen a white-collar bloodbath \u2014 yet<\/a><\/p>\n

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Iran wants full control over the Strait of Hormuz and seems unwilling to settle, analysts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unlikely Iran is going to open the strait\u2014at least for now, under current conditions\u2014unless the U.S. agrees to let [Iran] control it and toll it,\u201d said Andy Laperriere, head of U.S. policy at Piper Sandler, in a note. \u201c[Iran] probably figures the deal it will get tomorrow is better than the deal it can get today, so it keeps playing with Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

The blunt bottom line is that Trump has no \u201creal compromise\u201d choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no \u2018diplomacy\u2019 option available to Trump. He can either fight\u2014with likely unsatisfactory results\u2014or surrender control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran,\u201d the note added. \u201cFor now, he chooses to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

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But the clock is ticking and the math is publicly available data. Just look at the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).<\/p>\n

The SPR peaked above 726 million barrels during the last week of 2009 and it\u2019s down nearly 60% to 311 million barrels as of last week\u2014the lowest level since early 1983 when it was first being filled up. The SPR was at 415 million barrels as recently as late March, losing more than 100 million barrels in just four months.<\/p>\n

Trump authorized the withdrawal of up to 172 million barrels, which would bring the SPR just below the historic, consensus minimum operation threshold of about 250 million barrels. Below that level, it becomes difficult to pump oil out of the depleted underground salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana that comprise the SPR.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Energy recently countered that \u201ccavern mechanics\u201d would allow the SPR to go as low as 70 million barrels. Even if that\u2019s technically accurate, it would still become much more challenging to extract the oil well below 250 million barrels, likely leaving any technical minimum irrelevant. And oil markets are not interested in even flirting with such low numbers.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re no longer talking about hundreds of millions of barrels; we\u2019re talking about tens of millions of barrels,\u201d Pickering said. \u201cAdditional SPR releases beyond what\u2019s authorized would seem like you\u2019re getting close to scraping [storage] bottoms. That\u2019s not just in the U.S., but other places as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s the solution? \u201cYour answer is to get a deal with the Iranians, and they don\u2019t seem to want to make a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more AI executives demand OpenAI release more details about how the Hugging Face hack happened<\/a><\/p>\n

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Depleted emergency oil reserves create a dangerous game if the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea are effectively shuttered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iran"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump has no remaining levers to pull as oil hovers near the $100 \u2018psychological\u2019 threshold - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4172\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump has no remaining levers to pull as oil hovers near the $100 \u2018psychological\u2019 threshold - 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