As the war in the Middle East escalates to attacks on energy infrastructure, the White House is taking extensive measures to put downward pressure on oil prices.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday that the US had lifted some oil sanctions on Russia and could also remove some Iranian tankers from the American blacklist.
Bessent: “We unsanctioned Russian oil … in the coming days, we may unsanction the Iranian oil that’s on the water” pic.twitter.com/PmDJ9nXxEW
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 19, 2026
“We had a break the glass plan across the administration, and at Treasury, we sanctioned Russian oil…we created supply that is beyond the Strait of Hormuz,” the Treasury Secretary continued, “In the coming days, we may sanction that Iranian oil that is on the water.”
Bessent claimed that unsactions Iranian oil would actually hurt Tehran. “That’s about 10 days to two weeks of supply that the Iranians had been pushing out that would have all gone to China,” he said. “In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days as we continue this campaign.”
Global oil prices began to climb following the surprise US and Israeli attack on Iran on February 28. Iran responded to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to oil priced in US dollars and launched retaliatory attacks.
On Tuesday, Israel escalated the conflict by attacking Iranian facilities tied to the world’s largest natural gas field. Tehran said it would attack energy sites in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE in response.
On Wednesday, Trump posted on Truth Social that the US was unaware that Israel was going to attack the energy sites. “Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East, has violently lashed out at a major facility known as South Pars Gas Field in Iran,” he wrote. “The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen.”
He went on to threaten that if Iran attacked Qatar, the US would destroy Iranian energy facilities. “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar.” He added, “In which instance the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before.”
On Thursday, QatarEnergy’s CEO Saad al-Kaabi told Reuters that Doha’s two of Qatar’s 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities were damaged. Kaabi said the repairs will take 12.8 million tons per year of LNG off the market for three to five years.
