Liz Peek joined Fox Business’ The Bottom Line with Dagen McDowell and Brian Brenberg on Tuesday, as CENTCOM confirmed the U.S. military had destroyed five Iranian crude carriers, to break down what the escalating fighting in the Middle East really means for oil markets — and for American pocketbooks.
“It isn’t just a crude problem we have now — it’s definitely a refined products problem,” Peek said. With tanker strikes taking barrels off the market and attacks on Saudi and Russian refineries disrupting processing, she argued the market is tightening at every rung of the supply chain. And she said no one should expect relief from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — the United States has effectively decided it can no longer keep draining it, and the drawdown has been “keeping a lid on oil prices” that is about to come off.
Peek also flagged China, which she said has resumed and significantly increased its crude imports — a pressure point made more pointed by President Xi’s planned meeting with President Trump at the end of the month. Beijing has so far “acted like a rational actor,” buying when oil is low and stepping back when it is high. But she warned China could “step into the market and drive prices very much higher” — a possible shot across the bow at the U.S. economy.
Her bottom line: the pain at the pump is only the beginning. “The real threat now is that this higher oil price, which so far has been limited to gasoline prices at the pump being higher, now is going to begin to seep more profoundly into all kinds of goods in the United States because of transportation costs mainly,” Peek said.
Source: x.com/BottomLineFBN
