It’s not just Hormuz: Widening oil supply shocks pose growing GOP danger
With the midterms four months away, it appears to be growing harder — not easier — for the Trump administration to temper rising global oil prices.
07/24/2026 10:00 AM EDT
The expanding conflict in the Middle East is thwarting the Trump administration’s bid to lower gasoline prices ahead of the looming midterm elections.
It’s not just the Strait of Hormuz — oil tankers are now facing attacks on three major shipping routes as of this week. Global crude oil inventories are reaching critically low levels, with little hope of refilling them soon. And the temporary measures that have kept markets afloat since the war in Iran began, such as releases from nations’ petroleum reserves, are nearing their end.
The global Brent crude benchmark price has surged more than $25 a barrel since President Donald Trump declared the tenuous ceasefire with Iran “OVER!” earlier this month, topping $100 briefly on Thursday after reports that the Houthis in Yemen struck at least one oil tanker along a key shipping route that has provided Middle Eastern oil tankers an alternative to the threats of traversing the Strait of Hormuz.
For Republicans eager to put as much distance as possible between the gasoline price spikes in the spring and the Nov. 3 midterm elections, the new escalation presents a threat to their slim majorities in Congress. Gas prices jumped 15 cents from last week to $4.09 a gallon on Thursday, according to the American Automobile Association.
“Many Republicans thought [their chances of retaining control of Congress] had already hit rock bottom in the late spring and early summer, but now they’re finding that they can actually fall further,” said Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
“The danger for Republicans is we’re now just a little over three months away from Election Day, and even if the conflict is resolved relatively soon, many consumers are not going to see those benefits before they cast the ballot in the November 2026 elections,” he added.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Trump administration officials had assured Americans that the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran would last only a few weeks, and energy prices would come down well ahead of the midterms.
So far this year, oil prices have stayed much lower than many energy analysts forecast based on the scale of the supply disruptions in the Persian Gulf. China, the world’s largest crude importer, trimmed its purchases, while shippers scrambled to develop alternative crude delivery routes — both big factors in lessening the pain for energy markets. The coordinated release of up to 400 million barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and industrial nations’ stockpiles contributed to keep price increases in check — as has Trump’s jawboning of the markets.
The White House has been focused on keeping fuel prices under control, and Trump has frequently teased diplomatic breakthroughs, sending prices crashing. But the new surge in prices has so far drawn little response from the president, other than to say this week that the midterms won’t impact his plans in the Middle East.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers reiterated on Thursday that oil and gas prices will “plummet back to pre-conflict levels” as the U.S. military degrades Iran’s ability to harass ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
“President Trump remains committed to unleashing American energy dominance, cutting costs and putting more money back in the pockets of hardworking American families,” Rogers said in a statement.
Oil prices had slipped close to those pre-war levels earlier this month, but new obstacles have sent prices soaring, chief among them the resumption of bombing that has slowed transits through Hormuz. Iran struck three tankers sailing through the U.S.-backed southern corridor of the strait within 48 hours earlier this week, according to the maritime intelligence firm Windward.
And Iran has called on its Houthi allies in Yemen to target shipments in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. That route had seen increased traffic as Saudi Arabia diverted some of its Persian Gulf flows through a pipeline to its western port of Yanbu.
Crude exports through Yanbu have increased five-fold since the war began, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, which monitors global shipping — until this week when the Houthis declared a blockade on Saudi exports through the Bab el-Mandeb. The threat alone was enough to force some tankers to turn around, Lloyd’s said, and that was before the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Center reported Wednesday that a ship off the Saudi coast was on fire after being struck by an “unknown projectile.”
A third major oil shipping route has also been staunched by an ongoing conflict: A major pipeline from Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk shut down earlier this week as Ukraine escalated its attacks on tankers waiting to load there, striking four vessels in a matter of days.
A spokesperson for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which is partially owned by U.S. oil majors Chevron and Exxon Mobil, said oil shipments “are not being carried out.” And Kazakhstan, a U.S. ally with lucrative oil fields, condemned the attacks as “destabilising lawful international trade and global energy markets.”
Artem Abramov, deputy head of analysis at Rystad Energy, said that if the pipeline remains shut down for more than a week, global oil markets could be looking at a 25 million barrel cumulative loss.
“This is quite a critical disruption given the timing, so it clearly adds to the Hormuz and Red Sea impact on oil prices,” he said.
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In an unusual rebuke of its ally’s long-running campaign to disrupt Moscow’s oil revenues, the White House has warned Ukraine of “the need to cease and desist” attacking non-Russian tankers in the Black Sea, according to an administration official granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic conversations.
“The Administration views the CPC as a vital conduit of Kazakhstan-origin energy for European markets that serves as an alternative to Russian energy supplies,” the official said.
The triple-threat to shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, Red Sea and Black Sea is largely what’s driving the latest increase in crude prices, analysts said.
“A very large part of the world’s oil supply is surrounded by war, and with cures such as further, higher US production and SPR releases hard to fathom, and with other remedies already played out, this current march higher in crude prices is not only understandable but required,” John Evans, analyst at PVM Oil Associates, said in a client note Thursday.
Even before the new hazards to shipping, oil market fundamentals were starting to look concerning, analysts said. Global inventories that were amply supplied in February at the beginning of the war are reaching critically low levels. The Trump administration has also completed more than 60 percent of its planned SPR drawdown, with the pace of releases slowing significantly over the last month.
“The crisis is going to start now because now we’re through all of that oil,” said Amy Jaffe, an energy expert and professor at New York University. “It seemed like we were weathering everything that was happening, but it didn’t take into account not only the time it takes for supplies to disappear from the market, but also what happens when, after you get to that period, you then have other events that were not expected.”
Gregory Brew, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group, noted that U.S. refineries — whose production most directly affects domestic gasoline prices — are already running flat out and can’t do much more to keep pump prices down.
“The U.S. has essentially run out of spare refining capacity — it’s refining just about as much as it possibly can,” Brew said. “That suggests to me that as crude prices increase, if there isn’t de-escalation, then gasoline prices will increase as well — we’ll start to see it tick back up into the $4 to $4.50, potentially even as high as $5 a gallon, if we’re in September and October and there still hasn’t been any relief on Hormuz.”
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Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, delivered a stark warning at the Aspen Security Forum last week that the global oil market’s cushions are eroding.
“All of these … things [that] helped us to keep the price at $85 today — they are not infinite,” Birol said. “As things stand now in the Middle East, I think it is too optimistic to believe that the global economy is off the hook.”
Mike Soraghan contributed to this report.
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