US energy secretary says flows may take 'many months' to normalize

US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said on Tuesday that energy flows disrupted by the US-Israeli war against Iran could take "many months" to return to normal. Speaking at the Atlantic Council Energy Forum in Washington, DC, he noted that disruptions extend beyond crude oil and natural gas to include sulfur, helium, lubricants, and other critical industrial products flowing through the region.

Wright told the forum that ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is rising "very meaningfully" as operations gradually resume, though full normalization remains distant. "It's many months to get back to normal flows of energy," he said, emphasizing that the complexity of regional supply chains complicates rapid recovery.

Costs and economic resilience

The secretary argued that sustained energy costs would be "wildly worth paying" if Iran ceased to pose what he described as a constant threat to regional neighbors, peace, and investment flows. He framed the current disruptions as necessary sacrifices to eliminate long-term instability that has deterred capital deployment across the Middle East.

Wright pointed to the durability of modern economies in absorbing supply shocks, noting that global markets have weathered the disruptions with less severe impact than initially projected. "We've seen how robust a modern economy is, that it's absorbed these blows not with no impact, but with much more modest impact than was expected," he said, citing adaptive supply chains and strategic reserves.

Production expansion

Despite ongoing disruptions in the Persian Gulf, Wright highlighted production growth across multiple regions as evidence of a well-supplied global energy future. He cited expansions underway in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela, and Guyana, alongside development plans by US partners in the Middle East including Kuwait.

These projects demonstrate the diversified foundation of global supply networks, Wright noted, reducing long-term dependence on any single transit corridor. "We see a very bright, well-supplied energy future in the years and decades to come," he added, pointing to technological advances unlocking previously inaccessible reserves.

Strait of Hormuz standoff

The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world's most critical energy chokepoints, handling a significant portion of global oil shipments before Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps closed the waterway to most vessels on February 28. Tehran imposed the blockade in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks that began the same day, subsequently targeting Israel and American allies across the Gulf.

A ceasefire took effect on April 8 through Pakistani mediation, though subsequent talks in Islamabad failed to produce a lasting agreement. The truce was later extended by US President Donald Trump without a set deadline, leaving the status of Hormuz transit operations contingent on fragile diplomatic negotiations.