Oil Bulls Best Hope Nothing Messes With Texas
The Lone Star State has an increasingly outsize impact on demand.
A state with outsize importance for the oil market these days.
Photographer: Emily Kask/AFP/Getty Images
Looking at oil prices, sanctions on Iran haven’t so much kicked in as shuffled onto the stage. Waivers granted to eight countries by the Trump administration should mitigate the drop in Iranian oil exports to a large degree (and could even herald a near-term increase).
With midterm elections on Tuesday, the White House had good reason to go with hem-and-haw rather than shock-and-awe. Higher oil prices mean pain at the pump and, by extension, possible backlash at the ballot box. This doesn’t necessarily preclude a more-aggressive posture afterward. But oil watchers should take a leaf out of the administration’s playbook and direct some of their attention away from Iran and toward the U.S. itself.