By Benoît Morenne

President Trump took the stage Friday against a backdrop of crude storage tanks at the Port of Corpus Christi in Texas and touted low fuel prices to a small crowd of supporters.

"Slashing energy costs is among the most important actions we can take to bring down prices for American consumers," he said.

Just a few hours later, the U.S. and Israel launched overnight strikes against Iran that risk sparking a wide conflict in a region that churns out about one-third of global crude -- potentially snarling Trump's stated goal to make life more affordable for U.S. consumers.

Already, shipping is grinding to a halt in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane that connects the Persian Gulf to energy markets, and the U.S.-Israel offensive is raising the specter of a full closure. A regional conflagration could affect oil-field infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and other locations.

Benchmark U.S. oil futures climbed more than 7% to around $72 a barrel when trading resumed Sunday evening. Barclays analyst Amarpreet Singh said in a note to clients that the attacks could send global oil prices surging to $100 a barrel, a level not breached since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Experts say it's too early to say how the conflict will evolve, and it is possible any spike in crude prices will be short-lived. But destabilizing the Iranian regime could introduce a chronic risk in the region that could mean higher oil prices for longer. The conflagration risks ending a monthslong period of low prices at the pump and hurting Republicans' prospects in the midterm elections.

U.S. crude oil prices averaged about $65 a barrel last year, a boon to American drivers who were able to fill up their tanks for cheap, even as prices of coffee and ground beef surged. The average price of an unleaded gallon of gasoline was $2.98 on Sunday, down about 12 cents from a year ago, according to AAA.

Trump's aversion to the possibility that Iran might equip itself with nuclear weapons appears to outweigh whatever concerns he might have about a spike in oil prices that would sting consumers, said Bob McNally, founder and president of energy-consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group.

"He is willing to take the risk of higher oil prices to confront Iran," he said.

For now, Trump is benefiting from slack in global crude markets. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel and its allies on Sunday agreed to boost oil output by 206,000 barrels a day starting next month, a higher increase than what analysts had expected. Shale companies have defied predictions that they would hit the brakes and pushed the national crude output to a record average of 13.6 million barrels of oil a day last year.

Plus, refineries on the Gulf Coast are gobbling up cheap barrels of Venezuelan crude now under U.S. control.

Still, Trump is taking a remarkable gamble considering the damage high energy prices did to his predecessor. Gasoline prices hit a record high average of $5 a gallon in June 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine and oil prices soared past $100 a barrel. President Joe Biden said at the time there was little his administration could do to lower energy prices in the short term.

The soaring prices became a major liability for Democrats in the 2024 presidential election, with Trump hammering Biden over his handling of the economy.

"Gasoline reached a peak of over $6 a gallon at some stage, feeding the worst inflation in the history of our country," Trump said at the event in Corpus Christi.

Trump inherited booming oil-and-gas production and declining gasoline prices from the Biden administration, but he has contended with higher utility bills. Electricity-cost increases have outpaced other kinds of inflation and made energy prices a dominant theme ahead of the midterms.

Kevin Book, who heads research at energy-research firm ClearView Energy Partners, noted that the costs of natural gas and power contributed about 9.4% to annual consumer-price-index inflation in January, while the offset from motor fuels was exactly the opposite, at negative 9.4%.

"One of the strong tailwinds the administration has had has been that even as power prices are rising, gasoline prices have been falling," Book said. "It may be a question of whether or not the long-term legacy that Trump is trying to pursue will offset the short-term economic impacts."

ClearView said in a note Saturday that civil strife in the wake of regime change in Iran could prompt factions to jockey for power and lead to higher crude prices beyond the end of Israeli and U.S. combat operations.

There are some levers Trump might want to pull to mitigate a potential rise in gasoline prices. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve currently holds about 415 million barrels of crude that he could decide to tap, much the way Biden did after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Treasury Department estimated at the time that the massive release lowered the price of gasoline by 17 cents to 42 cents a gallon.

Clayton Seigle, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the conflict's impact on energy prices now hinges on the scale of potential disruptions to oil flows in the Middle East.

"Is this kind of a blip, or do we have higher disruption risk here to stay?" he said.

Write to Benoît Morenne at benoit.morenne@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 02, 2026 05:30 ET (10:30 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.