US energy secretary says energy flows may take 'many months' to normalize

US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said Tuesday that it could take "many months" for energy flows disrupted by the US-Israeli war against Iran to return to normal.

"It's many months to get back to normal flows of energy," Wright said at the Atlantic Council Energy Forum in Washington, DC, noting that disruptions extend beyond oil and gas to include exports of sulfur, helium, lubricants, and other critical products flowing through the region.

“We've seen how robust a modern economy is, that it's absorbed these blows not with no impact, but with much more modest impact than was expected,” he continued.

The secretary argued the energy costs would be "wildly worth paying" if Iran ceased to pose a “constant threat to its neighbors, to peace and stability, to investment in the region, and to the flow of energy.”

Wright also pointed to production growth across multiple regions as evidence of a well-supplied global energy future, citing expansions in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela, and Guyana, as well as expansion plans by US partners in the Middle East, including Kuwait.

"We see a very bright, well-supplied energy future in the years and decades to come," he said.

Wright also said the ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is rising “very meaningfully."

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints, with a significant portion of global oil shipments passing through it.

The waterway has been at the center of global energy concerns since Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced its closure to most vessels in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks that began on Feb. 28. Tehran also retaliated with attacks targeting Israel and US allies in the Gulf.

A ceasefire took effect on April 8 through Pakistani mediation, but talks in Islamabad failed to produce a lasting agreement. The truce was later extended by Trump without a set deadline.