Bessent says US may lift sanctions on Iranian oil stuck at sea |
Bessent says US may lift sanctions on Iranian oil stuck at sea
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said early Thursday that the U.S. may lift sanctions on Iranian oil that is already in transit amid rising energy prices resulting from the ongoing U.S. military operation in the Middle East.
Bessent told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo that about 140 million barrels of oil would be freed up by this move.
“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.”
Continued strikes from the U.S. and Israel against Iran have stalled the passage of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
The effective closure of this critical oil trading corridor has driven up energy prices across the globe. The average U.S. gas price spiked by 92 cents per gallon on Wednesday from a month ago, according to AAA.
The Treasury secretary and other Trump administration officials have denied a report that they did not plan for the trading passage’s closure.
“We anticipated this,” Bessent told Bartiromo. “We knew that there could be a temporary — and I want to emphasize temporary — chokepoint there.”
The U.S. temporarily lifted sanctions last week on the sale of Russian oil that was already at sea. These exemptions will be in place until April 11, and Bessent said this move has freed up 130 million barrels for the global petroleum supply.
President Trump also authorized the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and moved to boost oil production off of the California coast.
Bessent said Chinese buyers have been purchasing more than 90 percent of Iranian oil during this sanction period at a discounted price.
“When we go through, as we plan, to unsanction the Iranian oil, that oil will go up to a market price and it will end up in places other than China,” he continued. “It can flow into Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, India, who have been good actors in this.”
Democratic Sen. Andy Kim (N.J.), the ranking member on the Senate Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance, criticized the suggested move on Thursday.
“Trump is actively putting more money into the pockets of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the Iranian regime, but taking away money from American families with higher gas and grocery prices,” he wrote on social platform X, adding, “What an absolute mess.”
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