Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been severely disrupted amid the Middle East conflict, which recently hit the six-month mark.
Page F5From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 31 August 2026
Oil hits $90 after Iran strikes; Trump claims 65 million barrels of Venezuela's oil
As it ran on the front
Reconciling the week's oil ledger, hon. On the strikes side of the book: oil prices rose three percent to more than ninety dollars a barrel the day the United States and Iran traded fire for the first time in a month. That is one column, filled in by two outlets running the same number within hours of each other, which is what happens when a fact is a fact and not a rumor.
On the barrels side of the book: the same week, the administration announced a deal to take control of sixty-five million barrels of Venezuela's oil reserves, and then, in a separate item, went out and touted that same deal a second time. Two press mentions for one shipment of someone else's oil. That is worth noting, because a thing gets touted twice when the first touting needed a second touting to make it sound less like what it is.…
…(cont) Running the two columns against each other: the price of oil at the pump goes up because two countries are shooting at each other's infrastructure, and the response, on paper, is not a reserve release, not a pump-price cap, not a windfall tax filed anywhere in these four items. The response is a claim on sixty-five million barrels that used to belong to Venezuela. The household paying more this week for gasoline and the administration claiming more barrels this week are two different beneficiaries of the same ninety-dollar number, and the filing does not show them meeting in the middle.
Sixty-five million barrels, priced at ninety dollars, comes to just under six billion dollars, hon. That is not this desk's estimate; that is arithmetic sitting on top of the two numbers the wire already gave us. Nobody in these four items says where that six billion goes. Nobody in these four items says it goes to the pump. The ledger has a line for 'strikes cause price spike' and a line for 'administration acquires foreign barrels,' and those two lines are dated the same week, and the gap between them is six billion dollars nobody has accounted for.
This desk does not editorialize on motive. This desk only observes that when the price of a barrel goes up, the barrels that change hands afterward tend to change hands toward Washington, and the reconciliation, filed and dated, shows its work.
“This is the whole racket laid out in order: they strike a country, oil jumps three bucks a barrel overnight, and while you're paying it at the pump they announce they've locked down sixty-five million barrels of somebody else's oil for themselves. That barrel math was never going into your tank, it was going into their column.”
“This is smart energy diplomacy, plain and simple. Locking down Venezuelan barrels is diversification, it's not — look, sixty-five million barrels is a deal, the word is right there, 'deal,' and prices go up during wars, that's just what oil does, it isn't related, why would anyone connect those two things.”
The receipts
The first attacks in a month jolted energy markets. The average U.S. gasoline price remained 37 percent higher since the war began.
President Trump announced a deal to have majority control of more than 60 billion barrels of proven Venezuelan oil reserves. Amy Jaffe, the director of the Global Energy, Climate, and Sustainability Lab at New York University, joins CBS…
President Trump touted lower gas prices after last week's oil deal with Venezuela, but experts don't agree it will ease the cost for consumers anytime soon. Nancy Cordes reports.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.