Secretary Wright Joins Bloomberg Surveillance—September 14, 2026

Let's turn to energy. Crude rising this morning as export risk continues to build in the Middle East. Iran and Gulf states delaying talks on a temporary shipping lane through the Strait of Hormuz. And Saudi Arabia closing a key alternative route. Joining us now to discuss is the U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Mr. Secretary, thank you for your time this morning. We appreciate it. A critical juncture to have this conversation on Middle Eastern energy exports. What is your peers in the Middle East, what are the energy secretaries across the Middle East, including policymakers in Saudi Arabia, saying about what's going to happen to the east-west pipeline? Well, look, this is not new for strikes on this energy infrastructure. And of course, unfortunately, Iran's done a ton of that. But they've proven resourceful in the past. I think you'll see the pipeline back running very soon. Have you spoken to your Saudi counterpart? Why do you think very soon? Can you give us a time frame? I might have more of a time frame tomorrow. But yes, I've been in close contact from him since hours after the attack started. And so they've been very carefully assessing what the damage was, what needs to be done. And I think more clarity on that will come out very soon. As you know, Secretary Wright, that's seven million barrels a day in terms of capacity. How much right now do you see oil flowing through the Red Sea, which with the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Houthis really asserting more of their power? How much do you see flow of energy through that passageway? Well, there's been a few million barrels a day going through, but most of it has not gone through the Bab el-Mandeb. Most of it has gone the other way, through the Suez Canal and the pipeline there in Egypt. So, look, energy gets to markets. I just got the latest data from last night and flows through the Strait. Over 12 million barrels of oil and oil products flowed through the Strait of Hormuz last night. The running seven-day average is over 10 million barrels a day and on a gradual upward trend. We will see continued increase in energy flows out of the Arabian Gulf region. That will not be stopped by any activity Iran does. Bumps on the road, of course, but those are temporary bumps. When it comes to the Strait of Hormuz, 12 million barrels a day is north of what you said just a few weeks ago of 10 million barrels a day. How are those vessels getting out? So just to clarify, I often give 12 million as yesterday. The running average is a little over 10 million barrels a day, but I think you'll see that running average continue to go up. So these ships are escorted by the U.S. Joint Force. They're defended. They're mostly done at night. Of course, all the transponders are turned off, which is why the commercial shipping monitors just haven't had an ability to see it. And people think I give another opinion. Every morning, I get a report of every single ship, the ship name, exactly what its cargo was, and then it transited. So ours are estimates or guesses or magic math. I've heard all sorts of just hilarious critiques. It's just a serious reporting of exactly what's happening. Does that report also give you a breakdown of what is crude and what is oil product? It does. It does. I combine crude and oil products. We also get reports on LNG and other products that are going out. I've confirmed my public disclosures to just oil and oil products. How much are you seeing the Middle East as the source of some of the increase that we've seen in diesel prices in the United States, up some 30 over the past couple of months? Is that really coming from the Middle East or, as President Trump said yesterday, is that really due to Ukrainian attacks on Russian facilities? So it's a combination of all of the above. And that is one of our focuses in the Middle East, is to get more refined products out of the region. You'll see an upward trend on that. We are getting some, and it's not trivial, but we want to see even more come out of the Middle East. But yeah, obviously, there's been a huge disruption in Russian diesel exports. They were a meaningful exporter of diesel. Today, they're not exporting any. Russia was a small exporter of gasoline. Now they've become a meaningful importer of gasoline. So refinery is tight in the Middle East. It's tight in Russia. Heck, Gavin Newsom managed to two significant refineries in California in the last 12 months. So those are just own goals from Democrat climate policies. They think somehow hobbling our energy system does something good for the world. It doesn't. President Trump is just dead set on putting the American people and the American economy first. And we'll focus on energy addition. Even during these crises, you'll see progress in the production and ultimately progress on prices. Secretary Wright, how quickly could we see progress in prices, given the fact that we've seen a pretty rapid rise? And many analysts have come on this show and said they only see it going north, going further up ahead of the election. Yes, well, obviously Iran has turned up their attempts to disrupt energy flows, and they've got a lot of missiles and a lot of drones. So they have caused trouble in the short run. Certainly they've spread fear in the short run. I'm pretty confident you will see increased flows of oil and oil products through the strait in the coming weeks and in the coming months, regardless of what Iran does. And of course, we're working, we changed regulations for refiners in the U.S. to increase their throughput. We're past the summer driving season, so we'll see a natural decline in demand and you'll see a rise in the throughput of American refineries. But we've got, you know, obviously we're fighting against headwinds in Russian refining sector. Chinese have held refining capacity off the market. I suspect we'll see some of that come back and we'll continue to get increased refined products out of the Middle East. Where does that confidence come from, Mr. Secretary? You said I'm confident in the next few weeks. Where does that confidence come from? That comes from talking to the U.S. military and how our operations are running there and to all of the exporters in the area and what their plans are as far as getting ships and products ready to come out. So you look at the last eight weeks, we've had sort of a bumpy but steady increase in throughput. My suspicion is and from what I hear, we'll see an even a more rapid increase in throughput in the next two months than we saw in the last two months. That's directly from the exporters on the ground. But at the same time, Gulf partners were set to meet with the Iranians to try to open up a waterway and that meeting has been shelved. The rhetoric coming out of the region is actually not looking optimistic at all. So those are two different pathways. There's the pathway of Iran deciding they want to end being the world terrorists and they want to give life opportunities for their 90 million citizens. I don't know how to handicap that one. That's what you're reporting on there. What we're doing is using the U.S. joint force in collaboration with all our allies in the region to get flows to increase no matter what Iran does. So two different pathways. President Trump prefers the peace approach, but we've got the military assets to drive flows even without peace. Hopefully all this brings Iran to the table. They don't have a card anymore. Maybe it's better to give up the ghost. Secretary Wright, the president promised lower gas prices. He promised oil would be flowing. We have gasoline north of $4.30, diesel north of $6. At the same time, the current amount that we have of crude left in the SPR is basically above the mandatory baseline at these levels. When can you start refilling our strategic petroleum reserve? Oh, it'll start being refilled in the next few months. Remember the oil we released, none of it was sold. It was all swapped with delivery dates and delivery amounts agreed in those contracts. So that oil will start going in. The oil problem is going to fade away. The bigger problem is the refined products. It's turning oil into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. And President Trump, you saw last year amazingly low inflation-adjusted prices for gasoline, for diesel, for home heating from natural gas. So I think President Trump has delivered on his agenda to increase American energy flows. But of course, he also thought, I'm not going to kick the can down the road and deliver a nuclear-powered Iran to whoever President Trump's successor is. So yes, he took bold leadership there. I think the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that, oh my gosh, this is Iran without nuclear weapons. Imagine a nuclear-armed Iran. His leadership there does cause short-term disruptions. But this is a far bigger question. Imagine long-term energy prices where you have this regime in power in Iran, and they're nuclear-armed. That's unacceptable. Mr. Secretary, we appreciate your time this morning. Thank you. The U.S. Energy Secretary there.