Trump Hit Oil and Gas Harder Than Climate Policy Ever Could

With his Iran war, Trump badly damaged his favorite industry. It may never recover.

A fifth of the world’s oil supplies typically flow through the Strait of Hormuz. Amid America’s disastrous war of choice against Iran, it’s now been closed since March. As the United States and Iran edge closer to a prospective deal to end that war, analysts have marveled at the fact that oil markets have taken it mostly in stride. Prices never soared to the $200-per-barrel heights many feared. Before news of a possible agreement earlier this month, the price of a barrel of Brent crude—the global benchmark—remained below $100 per barrel. Gasoline prices stateside have risen only modestly.

Extractive interests in the U.S. brag that this stability is a product of their own dynamism. “The lesson from this moment is not that the United States is immune from global disruption,” the American Petroleum Institute argued last month. “It’s that decades of growth in American oil and natural gas production have fundamentally strengthened America’s energy position during periods of global instability. Maintaining that advantage will require continued investment in the infrastructure needed to connect abundant supply to growing demand—both at home and abroad.”

But the strength and nimbleness of the U.S. oil and gas industry isn’t the whole story. We don’t actually know how drivers in the U.S. might have fared if global prices had really soared.........

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