WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY: Good afternoon and happy Thursday, readers! For all you book lovers out there, the 2026 National Book Festival will be happening this weekend in D.C. There will be several authors and celebrities, including Kate McKinnon and Martin Scorsese, in attendance. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are still required. Learn more about the event and get your tickets here. 📚📖Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner energy and environment writers Callie Patteson (@CalliePatteson) and Maydeen Merino (@MaydeenMerino). Email cpatteson@washingtonexaminer dot com or mmerino@washingtonexaminer dot com for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list. As we reported in Daily on Energy last week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright claimed nearly 9 million barrels per day of crude oil was passing through the Strait of Hormuz. One week later, unnamed administration officials have asserted that upward of 10 million barrels per day are transiting the strait.
But for most market analysts, that’s “utterly preposterous.” The two U.S. officials claimed this week that the U.S. military has been able to facilitate the transit of around 10 million barrels of oil a day through the strait via a southern channel along the coast of Oman, according to Axios.If accurate, this would suggest that the U.S. has dramatically limited Iran’s ability to hold oil markets hostage, and facilitated the flow of at least half of what was pumped through before the war began. However, most trackers estimate that just about 5 million barrels of oil are transiting the strait each day, roughly half of the recent administration’s claim.Administration’s insistence: Trump officials have defended their estimates, saying they have access to data that the public does not.On Monday, Wright told Fox News that he receives a report each day detailing which ships exited the strait, what was being transported, and where the ship came from.“Ours aren’t estimates — we have the actual data,” he said.Wright said the agency can track ships that move covertly through the strait, turning off transponders to avoid detection and attacks from Iran. Private tracking relies on transponder data and thus is undercounting, he said.Some pushback: On the high end, oil market researcher Rory Johnston has said the seven-day average of confirmed transits through the strait peaked at around 7.5 million barrels per day during the first week of August.Brett Erickson, managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors, has repeatedly cast doubt on the Trump administration’s figures, calling the recent numbers “egregious,” “utterly preposterous,” and “complete crap.”Influence on prices: The Trump administration’s rosy view of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz doesn’t appear to have moved markets. Trump and other officials have been able to lower prices in the past by insisting there was steady flow of oil through the waterway, or that they were close to a peace deal. It’s unclear if that was the administration’s intention in releasing the recent figures, though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did say today that we’re seeing a “spike in oil prices today that I don’t really understand.” Now, traders have grown wary of the positive outlook from Washington, causing oil prices to near four-week highs. Around 2 p.m. EDT, both international and domestic prices were up by more than 2%, with Brent crude trading at around $93.57 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate was also up to $86.68 a barrel. Read more from Callie here.
