Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday he has no idea when gasoline prices will drop, pulling back from a prediction he made in March that gas could fall below $3 a gallon before summer.
“I can’t make any predictions about oil prices or gasoline prices,” Wright told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Back in March, Wright had appeared on that same program and said there was “a very good chance” Americans would see sub-$3 gas before the summer driving season. That forecast, he explained Sunday, was built on the assumption the Iran conflict would wrap up in four to six weeks.
The U.S. hit its military objectives inside that window, taking out Iran’s air and naval defenses and knocking out its missile and drone production capacity. Nuclear talks, Wright said, are taking “a little longer.”
The Strait of Hormuz sits at the center of it all. Both sides have used it as a pressure point, with maritime traffic through the chokepoint still restricted. Wright said the math is simple: once ships move freely again, prices fall.
“I can say that when we start to get free flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, energy prices will come down,” he said.
Iran, in Wright’s view, is “the biggest threat in the world to the flow of global energy.” Getting rid of its nuclear program, he said, would be “massively positive for the flow of energy” for Americans and the rest of the world.
Military force remains an option. “If need be, if we don’t get to a deal with Iran, we will use military force to open the Strait to everyone,” Wright said.
He made similar statements on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” where he said the paused Project Freedom operation to clear the strait would restart “if it’s clear in the next few days that there’s not a good path to a negotiated settlement.”
Wright said the administration has been taking steps to blunt the impact on consumers. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been tapped, with 30 allied nations releasing oil in coordination. EPA rules on summer gasoline blends were eased to help refineries push out more product. Refiners themselves were asked to cut back planned spring maintenance so output stays high.
On suspending the federal gas tax, Wright called the White House “open to all ideas” but said “everything has trade-offs.” The tax pays for highways and bridges, and a suspension would create headaches for a Congress already in the middle of reauthorizing transportation spending.
Wright didn’t sugarcoat the nuclear picture. Iran is sitting on roughly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent, just a step below weapons-grade, he said. No civilian nuclear program needs fuel enriched anywhere close to that level.
“They’ve lied all along that it’s for a civil nuclear program,” Wright said. “It was always about weapons, and the world just can’t live with a nuclear armed Iran.”
