Trump claims Iran's oil pipelines are "exploding".
That is not how it works,” Rosemary Kelanic, an energy scholar and director of the Middle East Program at the foreign policy think tank Defense Priorities, said of Trump’s predictions that Iran’s oil pipelines would soon detonate and that its energy industry is on the verge of collapse. “Nothing is going to self-destruct.”
Mark Finley, a fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute, agreed.
“Iran has proven it knows how to keep its system operating,” he said. The US blokade means there are plenty of empty tankers available to Iran that could hold stranded oil production, Finley said.
Even without them, “there is a domestic refining and distribution network that can keep the system running at a reduced rate,” he added.
Trump’s new and disputed claims that Iran faces a looming oil infrastructure disaster come as gas prices have surged to $4.30 per gallon of regular Thursday morning, from a national average of under $3 before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February.
Oil prices soared to their highest level since 2022, reaching $126 per barrel late Wednesday night before settling at $114 Thursday morning.
