Trump's Energy ‘tiger Team’ Struggles To Find Its Roar With Iran

President Donald Trump once pledged his incoming “energy dominance” team would bring about a golden age of American prosperity and global peace.

Now, 15 months later, the Trump administration’s self-described “Tiger Team” led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright appears flummoxed by the surge in global oil prices in the wake of the U.S. attack on Iran and is scrambling to head off a bout of energy-driven inflation.

Burgum has hewed to the White House line that the energy pain would be temporary, even as White House aides say he’s caused eye-rolling among staff amid his media appearances and trips to events like Rupert Murdoch’s birthday party. Wright’s efforts to reassure markets that oil supplies remain ample have fallen flat, and the Energy Department quickly deleted a market-churning social media post that erroneously claimed U.S. warships had escorted an oil tanker through the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz.

Energy experts say the administration underestimated the oil impacts from launching the war, which, despite near-record U.S. crude production, has sent gasoline prices at the pump up 60 cents a gallon in less than two weeks. The early messaging that global energy markets would cool in time as Iran’s threat to Strait of Hormuz shipping waned has been replaced Wednesday by its agreement that dozens of countries should release up to 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic stockpiles.

Trump said Wednesday afternoon that his administration would tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, though he did specify when the release would take place or how much oil would be involved. "We'll do that and then we'll fill it up," Trump told Cincinnati new station Local 12. "But right now, we'll reduce it a little bit and that brings the prices down."

Adding to the sense of confusion was the Tuesday post to Wright’sX.comaccount that the U.S. Navy had successfully escorted an oil tanker through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. The post, which the Energy Department attributed to a mistake by a staffer, was quickly deleted, but not before it sent oil markets whipsawing.

Democrats have been quick to pounce on the missteps by contending the Trump administration has failed to lay out U.S. goals in attacking Iran and failed to put in place a clear strategy to stabilize the Persian Gulf region that sends 20 percent of global oil and gas supplies through the strait.

Sen. Chris Murphy laid into the administration in a social media post after a briefing on the war on Tuesday for having “no plan” going into the war to keep the Hormuz open.

“Suffice it [to] say, right now, they don't know how to get it safely back open,” Murphy wrote on X. “Which is unforgiveable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable.”

Trump and Wright have sought to stabilize the energy markets, offering a U.S. insurance backstop for tankers traversing the waterway, easing sanctions on Russian oil purchases for India and saying the U.S. warships would protect oil tankers from Iranian missiles and drones. But the Navy later said it couldn’t provide that security despite receiving requests for protection from shippers — and overnight hits on three cargo vessels and Iran’s attempts to lay mines in Hormuz are keeping the sector on edge.  

Industry analysts are scratching their heads at the X.com gaffe and at the broader messaging strategy that has contributed to historic levels of market volatility, with oil prices swinging in a $40 per barrel range this week.

“The Department of Energy has really not been involved in this whole thing despite the fact that energy is a big part of the puzzle here,” Bob Yawger, commodity specialist at Mizuho Securities, said after Wright’s post. “And their first effort to kind of put up the big headline blew up on them.”

While Wright, the former CEO of an oilfield services company, and Burgum, the former North Dakota governor, have made repeated calls for the energy market to remain patient while the U.S. military strategy plays out, there has been little evidence the National Energy Dominance Council took an active role in the preparation for oil disruptions or the administration’s response.

Burgum, the NEDC chair, was in Venezuela to set a critical minerals and gold supply pact last weekend as crude prices climbed past $100 a barrel. Between TV appearances touting U.S. oil production, he also attended media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s 95th birthday party in Manhattan and unveiled a ceremonial IndyCar.

“Doug Burgum is becoming the ‘Where’s Waldo’ of the administration,” one industry official said of Burgum’s public appearances. “Where is he on these important energy issues?”

“I think people are generally annoyed with Doug Burgum,” said a person close to the White House who was granted anonymity to discuss internal relationships. “There's a lot of eye rolling around him.

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers expressed support for both Burgum and Wright. Despite his slew of unrelated public appearances, Burgum “continues to walk and chew gum as a key player in unleashing American energy dominance,” Rogers said.

"The President has full confidence in his entire energy team who are doing very well addressing the short-term disruptions from the Iranian terrorist regime,” Rogers said.

“President Trump’s all-star energy team has been working diligently, even prior to the start of Operation Epic Fury, to shore up global markets and protect American energy dominance,” Rogers added. “The President has full confidence in his team that has already brought American energy production to all-time highs, and any suggestion otherwise is fake reporting from activists reporters who know nothing.”

An Interior Department spokesperson added that Burgum is "grateful for the opportunity" to advance Trump's energy agenda and the administration “can multitask and has had a strong plan in place since before Operation Epic Fury began."

The executive order Trump signed creating the National Energy Dominance Council placed Burgum as its leader with Wright as a vice-chair. Meant to be a whole-of-government clearing house for the administration’s energy policy and the main trouble-shooter for permitting issues, its members also include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and a host of others.

Council Executive Director Jarrod Agen has called NEDC a “tiger team” of expertsworking out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to coordinate energy policy across the federal bureaucracy.

So far, NEDC has led the aggressive push to secure critical minerals, promote U.S. natural gas exports and support a proposed multi-billion dollar gas pipeline in Alaska. Agen himself has little experience in the energy sector, working as a communications and branding executive for Lockheed Martin and a communications director for former Vice President Mike Pence.

Burgum has positioned himself as the administration’s global energy cheerleader, traveling across the world to tout Trump’s “American energy dominance” agenda. But his efforts have largely been focused on developing new U.S. energy projects and securing buyers for those projects, which are years away from coming online.

As U.S. crude and gasoline prices have surged, Wright and Burgum have both cited the record U.S. oil production as a buffer that’s prevented costs climbing even higher, and argued that the war in Iran would ultimately bring about greater global energy stability.

Burgum reiterated that message on Wednesday at an infrastructure event.

“I think we’re at a point where — it's a unique thing — where all of the Arab allies that are aligned with us, there's an opportunity for us to achieve something here that is within the military scope of what we said that we set out to do, but in the process of doing that end up with less security risk on energy for the whole planet,” he said. “That’s going to mean greater prosperity, greater investment opportunity [and] partnership opportunities.”

An oil industry lobbyist said it would be unlikely for NEDC staffers to be involved in high-level discussions about whether to draw from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to counter price increases.

“To me it’s a PR shop — there’s very little policy chops in there,” the lobbyist said of the council. “Beyond being an entry point to the administration, I don’t really know what they do.”

U.S. oil producers have certainly benefited from the surge in prices — but the rebound from the preinvasion levels near $60 so far has not convinced them to increase their drilling.

Domestic oil companies would need a firmer signal that oil is needed before they start adding new drills to the fields, said Brook Simmons, head of the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma.

“Yes, Secretary Wright is correct about the price spike being temporary,” Simmons said. “The industry doesn’t yet understand the duration of temporary. There have been few, if any, public signals from the warring nations that a resolution of the conflict is imminent as of” Monday afternoon.

Dasha Burns, Ian Stevenson and Sam Sutton contributed to this report.