US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that many tanker ships are en route to the United States to transport oil and gas to other countries.
“Massive numbers of completely empty oil tankers, some of the largest anywhere in the World, are heading, right now, to the United States to load up with the best and “sweetest” oil and gas anywhere in the World,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
His post came as senior US and Iranian officials met on Saturday in Islamabad with Pakistani intermediaries for talks about the war that started on February 28 with US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequently expanded as Iranian forces began striking nearby countries.
Trump said earlier this week Iran should not charge fees to tankers going through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been mostly closed to shipping since the war began, causing the worst disruption to global energy supplies in history.
READ MORE: Hormuz at near standstill as Iran warns ships to keep to its waters
Crude oil futures have spiked since the start of the war and the closure of the strait. US oil now trades at a premium to the global benchmark, Brent. US crude oil settled at $96.57 a barrel on Friday, while Brent was at $95.20.
Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma, said while he cannot comment on whether empty tankers are heading to the United States for oil, the ongoing Hormuz closure could generally boost demand for US oil.
“We’re producing so much more oil than we were 10 years ago,” he said. “The situation with the Strait of Hormuz, even with the peace talks, could take months in a best-case scenario to work out, so absolutely US oil will be higher in demand as a result. Whether that plays out to fruition with actually people sending their empty tankers our way, I have no idea.”
While Trump’s post about oil tankers “sounds good from an American point of view,” investors are more focused on the talks between the US and Iran to end the war, said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield, Connecticut.
“We’re all waiting — everybody along with Wall Street — to see what comes about from these discussions,” he said.
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