Oil futures market

US treasury secretary: No plan for administration to intervene in oil futures market

By David Goldman

For several weeks, rumors have persisted that the Trump administration would initiate some kind of intervention in the oil futures market to reduce prices, although it was unclear exactly how that might work.

But US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said today there is no such plan.

“We haven’t done that,” Bessent said in an interview with CNBC from Paris, adding he wasn’t sure “under what authority or what auspices” the US government would have to intervene in the markets.

The treasury secretary acknowledged that between 10 million and 14 million barrels of daily oil supply have been cut off from the world because of Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But he noted that some oil tankers are getting through, including Indian and Iranian vessels, which Bessent said the US Navy was allowing to pass. He argued supplying the global market was good for prices overall.

Bessent said concerns about food shortages and another inflation crisis were overdone. Oil would be “much lower” than $80 a barrel in a couple months, he said, down from around $100 a barrel today.

“Let’s just be clear here: It’s two weeks; it’s two weeks,” Bessent said about the war’s timeframe so far. “This will end. And I don’t know how many weeks it will be, but on the other side of this, the world will be safer and we will be better supplied.”