Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday he is confident the global energy markets will soon stabilize, citing President Donald Trump’s latest operation to divest the Strait of Hormuz of Iranian influence, among other initiatives.
Bessent said Trump’s Project Freedom operation in the strategic waterway, which launched on Monday, alongside the United Arab Emirates’ decision to leave OPEC, will help the world be “awash in oil.” As part of Project Freedom, the United States is escorting oil tankers and other vessels through the Strait of Hormuz with 15,000 personnel, guided-missile destroyers, and more than 100 aircraft. Two commercial vessels have thus far safely transited the Strait of Hormuz as part of Project Freedom, according to the U.S.
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“[Iran is] trying to cut off international freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. is opening that up,” Bessent said during a Fox News interview. “The market, because of the conflict around the strait, is in deficit, about 10 million barrels a day. … So, every crude carrier that goes through has about 2 million barrels. So, four or five crude carriers a day coming through — of the pent-up demand, we think there are more than 150, 200 crude carriers that can come out.”
“I think the market is going to be very well supplied,” Bessent continued. “We are saying the Iranians do not have control of the strait. We have absolute control of the strait.”
Bessent pointed to the upheaval at OPEC as a cause for optimism in the global energy market. The UAE left OPEC on May 1. The move was significant, as it stripped OPEC of one of its largest producers, weakening the oil cartel’s leverage over the global oil supply and prices, and expanding market access to the UAE’s energy reserves.
“The UAE has come out of OPEC,” Bessent said this week. “They’re going to be pumping more. OPEC just announced that they’re going to be pumping more, and the U.S. has record crude deliveries. … I’m confident on the other side of this, the world’s going to be awash in oil.”
Iran has vowed to resist Project Freedom. Brent crude oil prices briefly spiked to above $114 a barrel on Monday, marking a four-year high, after Iran said it fired on a U.S vessel making its way through the Strait of Hormuz as part of the operation.
The U.S. denied the report. But South Korea and the UAE confirmed two other incidents in the passageway on Monday, which signals that Washington’s hopes of opening the waterway are under duress. The UAE said that two Iranian drones attacked its tanker that tried to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. South Korea said it is probing an explosion that happened on a Panama-flagged ship docked in the strait.
Bessent said during a separate interview on Sunday that a U.S. blockade on all vessels entering or departing Iranian ports around the Strait of Hormuz has deeply damaged the regime, as it means the country will soon run out of storage space for the oil it is producing and cannot export due to the blockade. Storage is rapidly filling since Trump announced the blockade on April 12, and the regime may have to begin shutting in wells “in the next week,” Bessent said on Fox News’Sunday Morning Futures.
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“No ships are getting through the strait from the Iranian side, and we have upped the pressure on anyone trying to remit money into Iran to help the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps],” Bessent said. “Their oil infrastructure is starting to creak…It hasn’t been maintained again because of our decadeslong sanctions against them.”
“We are running a marathon over the past 12 months, and now we are sprinting toward the finish line,” he added. “They are not able to pay their soldiers. This is a real economic blockade.”
