'When will it end?’ The ‘elevator pitch’ oil executives and diplomats are making to the White House in Houston - Politico

Fire and plumes of smoke rise after a drone struck a fuel tank near Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates on March 16. | AP

The Trump administration is sending its top energy officials to Houston this week to meet with oil industry executives and foreign dignitaries — and they can expect to get an earful as its war in Iran has sent their industry into upheaval.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, National Energy Dominance Council Executive Director Jarrod Agen, FERC Chair Laura Swett and other administration officials will be in the midst of the largest gathering of energy industry officials in the world this week.

The annual CERAWeek confab comes nearly a month into the U.S.-Israel-Iran war and the all-but-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s main thoroughfares for Middle East oil, fuel shortages in Asia and the destruction of huge parts of the region’s natural gas fields and export plants.

If there’s one message the industry wants to deliver to the administration, according to interviews with half a dozen energy industry executives and foreign diplomats planning to attend the event, it’s this: People need to know when the conflict that is already causing major damage to their world order will end.

“Generally in the elevator pitch, people are going to say, ‘Look, we need to know duration, and we need to know infrastructure possibilities. We need to make sure that the uncertainties are as limited as possible,’ said Frank Maisano, a senior principal at Bracewell, an energy law firm. “The events in Iran have just kind of overwhelmed what anybody was thinking this year might be about.”

Wright met with a group of energy industry executives outside the conference hall Sunday evening, two people familiar with the meeting said. A DOE representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The chaos caused by the war led the CEO of Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco to skip the conference this year, Reuters reported. Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods, who has also been a featured speaker at the conference in previous years, will also not attend this year, a person familiar with the plan said.

A White House spokesperson, when asked the administration’s timeline for the war, referred to a post White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made on X on Friday.

“The President and the Pentagon predicted it would take approximately 4-6 weeks to achieve this mission,” Leavitt said in the post. “Day by day, the Iranian Regime is being crippled, and their ability to threaten the United States and our allies is being significantly weakened.”

President Donald Trump himself said Friday that the United States was “very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down” Iran war, but left the issue of Hormuz open ended.

“The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it - The United States does not!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Oil prices made their steepest climb in decades and have swung wildly as Trump has said at various times he considers the war won or, more recently, that the U.S. might fire missiles at Iran’s power plants. Fuel has become scarce in some countries while rising gasoline prices at home elevate cost-of-living concerns ahead of the midterm elections.

Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, said companies are hoping for “a speedy solution” to the conflict.

“Market volatility and short-term price fluctuations create challenges for industry planning, which relies on stability to drive future investment,” Staples said in a statement.

The war, even after less than a month, has the potential to fundamentally scramble an energy map that was just returning to a new normal after the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Europe, where natural gas supply is running low because of the lack of LNG tankers moving through Hormuz and the destruction of a key gas export plant in Qatar, is now debating whether to turn back to Russian gas it had avoided after the Ukraine invasion or redouble efforts to develop wind and solar power projects.

“We want to know what the plan is to re-open the strait,” an industry executive who will be attending said was his main question for White House officials.