It doesn't matter, when you have a fucking stupid pile of shit in control...

'When will it end?’ The ‘elevator pitch’ oil executives and diplomats are making to the White House in Houston

At the world’s largest energy industry gathering, there’s one question on top of everyone’s minds.

By Ben Lefebvre, Phelim Kine and Mike Soraghan

The Trump administration is sending its top energy officials to Houston this week to meet with oil industry executives and foreign dignitaries — and they can expect to get an earful as its war in Iran has sent their industry into upheaval.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, National Energy Dominance Council Executive Director Jarrod Agen, FERC Chair Laura Swett and other administration officials will be in the midst of the largest gathering of energy industry officials in the world this week.

The annual CERAWeek confab comes nearly a month into the U.S.-Israel-Iran war and the all-but-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s main thoroughfares for Middle East oil, fuel shortages in Asia and the destruction of huge parts of the region’s natural gas fields and export plants.

If there’s one message the industry wants to deliver to the administration, according to interviews with half a dozen energy industry executives and foreign diplomats planning to attend the event, it’s this: People need to know when the conflict that is already causing major damage to their world order will end.

“Generally in the elevator pitch, people are going to say, ‘Look, we need to know duration, and we need to know infrastructure possibilities. We need to make sure that the uncertainties are as limited as possible,’ said Frank Maisano, a senior principal at Bracewell, an energy law firm. “The events in Iran have just kind of overwhelmed what anybody was thinking this year might be about.”

Wright met with a group of energy industry executives outside the conference hall Sunday evening, two people familiar with the meeting said. A DOE representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The chaos caused by the war led the CEO of Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco to skip the conference this year, Reuters reported. Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods, who has also been a featured speaker at the conference in previous years, will also not attend this year, a person familiar with the plan said.

A White House spokesperson, when asked the administration’s timeline for the war, referred to a post White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made on X on Friday.

“The President and the Pentagon predicted it would take approximately 4-6 weeks to achieve this mission,” Leavitt said in the post. “Day by day, the Iranian Regime is being crippled, and their ability to threaten the United States and our allies is being significantly weakened.”

President Donald Trump himself said Friday that the United States was “very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down” Iran war, but left the issue of Hormuz open ended.

“The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it - The United States does not!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Oil prices made their steepest climb in decades and have swung wildly as Trump has said at various times he considers the war won or, more recently, that the U.S. might fire missiles at Iran’s power plants. Fuel has become scarce in some countries while rising gasoline prices at home elevate cost-of-living concerns ahead of the midterm elections.

Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, said companies are hoping for “a speedy solution” to the conflict.

“Market volatility and short-term price fluctuations create challenges for industry planning, which relies on stability to drive future investment,” Staples said in a statement.

The war, even after less than a month, has the potential to fundamentally scramble an energy map that was just returning to a new normal after the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Europe, where natural gas supply is running low because of the lack of LNG tankers moving through Hormuz and the destruction of a key gas export plant in Qatar, is now debating whether to turn back to Russian gas it had avoided after the Ukraine invasion or redouble efforts to develop wind and solar power projects.

“We want to know what the plan is to re-open the strait,” an industry executive who will be attending said was his main question for White House officials.

The Pentagon has ramped up the number of warplanes and helicopters attacking the Iranian military in the Strait, but the action could take weeks to fully open the waterway. Meanwhile, U.S. oil prices were nearly $99 a barrel on Sunday evening, up nearly 50 percent from when the shooting started on February 28. Meanwhile, motorists in the United States are paying an average of $3.94 a gallon.

Foreign officials who will be attending the conference in Houston will be making the same pitch. As disruptive as the war has been on energy in the United States, it is becoming debilitating in Europe and Asia, which are much more dependent on imports of oil and natural gas. European countries are running low on their natural gas supply, while China has stopped exporting its own fuel in order to guard its inventories as oil becomes scarcer.

Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Philippines will all run out of oil in three weeks, said a U.S.-based Asian diplomat. Prices in the region are already rising, and if the countries run out of fuel it will drag the macroeconomy and could lead to a recession, the diplomat said.

“ASEAN countries are losing trust in the U.S., especially under Trump,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “That’s 100 percent an own goal for the U.S. And China is just watching and waiting.”

“When will it end?” a second Washington-based Asian diplomat said will be the main question foreign officials will ask Trump administration officials, alluding to Iran.

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers pointed to a swath of agreements that Japan and other countries have been making to invest in energy projects in the United States as proof of the confidence they have in the administration.

“Our allies have already turned to the United States as a reliable partner and supplier of crude oil and natural gas as proven by the billions of dollars in energy deals signed over the past week,” Rogers said.” The Iranian terrorist regime’s attacks against our Gulf allies underscore the importance of eliminating this threat to our partners in the region and beyond.”

In the short term, Iran’s destruction of a major natural gas export plant in Qatar and closure of Hormuz has been a boon for U.S. companies shipping natural gas to Asia. Shares of LNG exporters Cheniere Energy and Venture Global on Friday were up more than 30 percent since the military strikes.

But companies are also fretting that it could ultimately lead to fewer sales in the future as countries experiencing gas shortages will focus on developing gas sources closer to home. Hungary and Slovakia are already asking for waivers to the sanctions put on Russian natural gas put in place to punish it for its invasion of Ukraine, and other countries are taking a closer look at renewable and nuclear energy projects.

The war in the short term presents “a good situation“ for U.S. exporters looking to replace the cargoes Asia has lost from the Middle East, said one U.S. LNG executive granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the press. But “I think it’s long-term demand destruction,” this person added.

Chris Treanor, the executive director of the Partnership to Address Global Emissions, said the pro-natural gas coalition wants the Trump administration to keep permitting reform on the front burner, even amid the ongoing Middle East war.

“I hope that one of the takeaways, when we get through part of this emergency response, will be that permitting reform needs to be taken seriously by the administration,” Treanor said. “The more that we can efficiently and effectively move the molecules and electrons from where they are produced to where they are needed….the more secure and reliable our system is.”