Stopgap measures aren’t enough to halt rising prices as the world scrambles for more oil

Prices are displayed at a gas station in Chicago, Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y.

Huh) 2026-04-01T09:58:43Z NEW YORK (AP) — Global leaders have been scrambling to contain the rising cost of oil and gasoline since the start of the Iran war, which took a record amount of oil off the market when tankers full of crude were stranded in the Persian Gulf and military strikes damaged refineries, pipelines and export terminals.

Hoping to ease some pain for consumers, President Donald Trump and other heads of state have been pulling on various levers, launching more oil on the market in a bid to calm the chaos.

A group of 32 nations that are members of the International Energy Agency began releasing the largest volume of emergency oil reserves in its history: 400 million barrels.

Trump is tapping into oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve while lifting sanctions on Russian and Iranian crude and temporarily waiving the Jones Act, a maritime law that requires ships carrying goods between U.S. ports to be U.S.-flagged.

But despite those maneuvers, crude oil has soared well past $100 a barrel and gasoline is selling for $4.14 a gallon on average in the U.S.

While the stopgaps are helping, they’re not adding up to enough oil to replace what’s stranded, experts say. “They’re all incremental,” said Mark Barteau, professor of chemical engineering and chemistry at Texas A&M University. “You’re talking about these different patches being at the level of maybe 1 to 2 million barrels a day each, and you’ve got to get to 20, so it’s hard to see those actually adding up to the numbers that are needed.

And then the question is, how long can you sustain those?” Read More Trapped oil Before the war began, roughly 15 million barrels of crude oil and 5 million barrels of oil products passed daily through the Strait of Hormuz , the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, amounting to about 20% of global oil consumption, according to the International Energy Agency.

In addition to that loss, some oil producing nations in the Middle East have halted oil production because they can’t ship fuel out of the Gulf and their storage tanks are full.

That’s taken about 10 million barrels per day off the market, the IEA said.

Then there are the eight countries around the Persian Gulf that together hold about 50% of global oil reserves.

Under normal circumstances, they coordinate closely to raise or lower their output to keep prices steady, said Jim Krane, energy research fellow at

原文链接: AP News