US says monitoring Israel-Iran attacks' impact on global energy supply
WASHINGTON: U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Friday he and his team are working with the White House's National Security Council to monitor the situation in the Middle East and any potential impacts to global energy supply.
Wright said on X, after Israel's strikes on Iran's nuclear sites and Iran's response of missiles on Israel, that President Donald Trump's policy of maximizing U.S. oil and gas output, which also involves slashing pollution regulations, has boosted U.S. energy security.
Oil and gas sites in Iran, an OPEC member, have not been targeted, analysts have said.
Global crude oil prices spiked on Friday, settling 7% higher at more than $74 per barrel on investor worries about conflict spreading to the wider Middle East.
Iran strikes back at Israel with missiles over Jerusalem, Tel Aviv
And U.S. gasoline prices could rise about 20 cents a gallon in coming days during peak U.S. summer driving season 'creating economic pressures and political headwinds for President Donald Trump, who campaigned on lowering energy costs,' analysts at ClearView Energy Partners said in a note to clients.
ClearView said higher prices could push Trump to focus on tapping strategic petroleum reserves, seeking supply additions from the OPEC+ production group, and could complicate efforts to tighten sanctions on Russia, one of the world's top three oil producers.
The U.S. Energy Department did not immediately respond to a question about the potential to tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the world's largest, which currently holds 402.1 million barrels of crude.
Fatih Birol, the head of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, said on X that the IEA oil security system, which includes the U.S. SPR, has more than 1.2 billion barrels of emergency stocks.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries slammed Birol's post, saying on X it raises false alarms and 'projects a sense of market fear.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Express Tribune
2 hours ago
- Express Tribune
Cabinet okays uplift, pension reforms
The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Cabinet, in its 34th meeting held on Friday under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Ali Amin Khan Gandapur, approved a series of development initiatives and administrative reforms aimed at strengthening infrastructure, healthcare, public service delivery, and pension management across the province. One of the major decisions included the approval for procurement of 50 additional diesel-hybrid buses for the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system at a cost of Rs3.2 billion. This move comes in response to the growing public demand and recent expansion of BRT routes from six to eight, including new routes DR-11, DR-13, and DR-14. With this addition, the BRT fleet will grow beyond the current 244 buses, improving service frequency and coverage. The cabinet also approved the merger of four ADP scheme campuses of the "ZamungKor" Model Institute for State Children in Swat, DI Khan, Abbottabad, and Peshawar Girls Campus into the main Peshawar-based autonomous body. The merger aims to streamline operations and improve care for over 1,000 children currently enrolled across the facilities. In a significant financial reform, the cabinet approved Pak Qatar Asset Management as the 13th asset management company under the Contributory Provident (CP) Fund Rules 2022. The CP Fund, introduced in 2015, is part of pension reforms shifting from an unfunded to a funded pension model, ensuring sustainability and investment of pension contributions through SECP-registered firms. The cabinet passed several legal amendments, including revisions to the K-P Right to Public Services Act, 2014. The updates aim to enhance e-governance, coordination, and public accountability, while also introducing provisions for marginalized communities. Amendments were also made to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Public Private Partnership Rules 2021, reducing the bidder response time from 60 to 30 days, to accelerate project delivery. Health sector improvements were also prioritized, with the cabinet approving enhanced funding for several ongoing projects. These include an increase in cost for Balakot's Category-C Hospital from Rs575 million to Rs924.596 million, conversion of 50 rural health centers into 24/7 facilities (Rs1.7 billion), and upgrade of 200 Basic Health Units for round-the-clock maternal care (Rs2.96 billion). Additionally, a Rs346 million grant was sanctioned for modern equipment at Peshawar Institute of Cardiology. The cabinet also approved a non-ADP scheme worth Rs124 million to resume salaries for Provincial Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (PERRA) staff and directed the issuance of termination notices to contract employees from July 2025. Other approvals included financial assistance of Rs10 million for a cancer patient, appointment of Rubab Mehdi as K-P's Ombudsperson, and inclusion of Makniyal in Urban Area Development Authority Haripur. Further allocations included Rs1.5 billion for transformer repair, Rs1.041 billion for settling PESCO dues, and Rs400 million for irrigation sector maintenance. The cabinet lifted a vehicle procurement ban to allow two official vehicles for District and Sessions Judges in Mohmand and Khyber and approved outsourcing of tobacco cess collection (excluding factories). The cabinet also sanctioned the hiring of legal counsel for an anti-narcotics case in the Supreme Court and reviewed land utilization and timber trade mechanisms in Upper Kohistan and Chitral.
Business Recorder
3 hours ago
- Business Recorder
Trump says Europe will not be able to help much with Iran-Israel war
WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Europe would not be able to help much in the war between Iran and Israel. 'Europe is not going to be able to help with this one,' Trump said. European powers urge Iran to continue US nuclear talks European foreign ministers urged Iran on Friday to engage with Washington over its nuclear program after talks in Geneva aimed at opening negotiations for a new nuclear deal ended with little sign of progress.
Express Tribune
3 hours ago
- Express Tribune
World Order — exceptionalism, aggression, brazen hypocrisy
The writer heads the independent Centre for Research and Security Studies, Islamabad. He is currently a visiting Research Fellow at Fudan University, Shanghai Listen to article Israel's ongoing reaction to the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, and the current ungrounded aggression against Iran only reinforced a bitter reality of the world today — the post-9/11 order rests on brazen aggression and high-handedness of the mighty ones who have arrogated to themselves the right to define conflict, self-defense, evil, terrorism and victimhood. The world order today knows no values, no morality. Nor any consideration for national or international law. Notions such as rule of law and democracy have meanwhile been reduced to fiction. We still hear a lot of western pontification on extremism and terrorism but it's pretty ironic that they don't apply the same yardstick to Israeli actions against women and children in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. On the contrary, all leaders defended this as "Israel's right to self-defence". Donald Trump — as it turns out — simply lied when he vowed to "end wars" and uttered his contempt for the deep state. He had vowed to reform the justice department which he described as "department of injustice" immediately after his reelection. Bit by bit, the G-7 nations have scornfully pulled down the very values they championed for decades by inventing a self-serving exceptionalism in their own favour (read in Israel's favour). Today, they condemn attacks on Israel as criminal but hail the killing of nearly 60,000 Palestinians as self-defence. All G-7 leaders dub Iran as the source of instability but are literally blind to — in fact complicit with - the Israeli actions of first killing Palestinians and now recklessly bombarding Iran to neutralise their nuclear weapons, although a US report, according to CNN, says Iran is far away from making a nuclear bomb. But all that seems just an excuse for crippling Iran and brining about a regime change. On the sidelines of the recent G-7 summit in Alberta, Canada, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spelt out this backhanded approach by the Israel apologists - a virtual endorsement of Israeli actions to date. "This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us — this mullah regime [in Iran] has brought death and destruction to the world," Merz said in an interview with the ZDF broadcaster. In a separate interview with Welt TV, Merz also suggested Israel's attacks on Iran could lead to the demise of the Islamic republic's leadership. "To be honest, I can hardly imagine the mullah regime returning to its old functions," he added, in a glaring display of hypocrisy born off cold-blooded geopolitics. The G-7 essentially endorsed the Israel position on Iran. This way they themselves undercut the very themes they touted for decades as the West's unique selling point (USP) i.e. democracy, rule of law and human rights with the United Nations watching on as a silent, literally irrelevant spectator. Its predecessor — the League of Nations — had ceased to exist on April 20, 1946, largely due to its inability to prevent major global conflicts, particularly World War II. Will the United Nations meet the same fate and drown in irrelevance? For all practical reasons, the UN has been reduced to a debating club of the elite that thrives off the funding from member countries. Israel today is doing what Rudolf Hitler did first against neighbouring European countries and then against Russia. Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 triggered reaction from America, Russia, Britain and France, with the last two mentioned countries declaring war on Germany on September 3, and so began the World War II. Will the murder of nearly 60,000 Palestinians and hundreds of Iranians as well as the potential Chinese and Russian reaction lead to the undoing of the United Nations that has been irrelevant at least since October 2023? Blind exceptionalism — basically another synonym for hypocrisy — is causing a major shift in global politics. Battle lines have further deepened with willful demonisation of Iran and its major supporters thus far i.e. China and Russia. This exceptionalism is stinkingly obnoxious, evident also from a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. "The US, Israel and India blundered by allowing Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons. Repeating the blunder with Iran would be far worse," says an oped by Sadanand Dhume in the Journal's June 18, 2025 issue. Once again, this extremely self-serving argument — as if it were the benevolence of these countries and not relentless efforts of Pakistani scientists and engineers — exposes the exceptionalism being peddled in western official corridors and media houses. Nobody speaks of how Israelis and Indians got hold of nuclear weapons. Neither of them has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but continues to demonise Pakistan's nuclear capability like a crime committed. For the G-7 nations crimes, it seems, against hapless Palestinian women and relentless attacks on Iran are self-defence, while Pakistan's nuclear capability and Iran's nuclear pursuits are an unacceptable offence.
