Trump said Iran’s oil pipelines will soon ‘explode.’ Energy experts doubt it.

After weeks of unsuccessfully pressuring Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump spent recent days arguing that its closure had brought Tehran to the brink of an explosive plumbing problem that would force it to the bargaining table.

“If they don’t get their oil moving, their whole oil infrastructure is going to explode,” Trump told reporters at the White House last Thursday, touting the success of a U.S. blockade on the waterway that ordinarily ferries about 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas.

He said during an appearance on Fox News’s “The Sunday Briefing” this week that Iranian oil pipelines “both mechanically and in the earth” would “explode from within” if the country did not start exporting through the strait soon. “They say they only have about three days left before that happens. And when it explodes, you can never rebuild it the way it was,” Trump said.

Despite the president’s predictions of impending disaster, energy industry officials and analysts warn that scenario is unlikely. Iran has weeks or even months before it risks running out of places to store oil, experts told The Washington Post.

Even if the country’s storage becomes full, there is disagreement about how much — if any — permanent damage would be caused. The skepticism that met Trump’s comments suggested Americans tired of paying more for gas and other products dependent on shipping through the strait shouldn’t expect a rapid end to the standoff between the United States and Iran.

“That is not how it works,” Rosemary Kelanic, an energy scholar and director of the Middle East Program at the foreign policy think tank Defense Priorities, said of Trump’s predictions that Iran’s oil pipelines would soon detonate and that its energy industry is on the verge of collapse. “Nothing is going to self-destruct.”

Mark Finley, a fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute, agreed. “Iran has proven it knows how to keep its system operating,” he said. The closure of the strait means there are plenty of empty tankers available to Iran that could hold stranded oil production, Finley said. Even without them, “there is a domestic refining and distribution network that can keep the system running at a reduced rate,” he added.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record, said that there were already clear signs that Iran’s oil infrastructure was under stress that over time would cause lasting damage.

“That requires advanced technology and significant capital to reverse,” the official said. “Under current sanctions, Iran has limited ability to access either, making much of this impact irreversible.”

The Treasury Department said in a statement that Iran is already being starved of oil revenue and that energy executives at a White House meeting Tuesday “urged the administration to continue the blockade and reaffirmed that Iran would soon be fully shut in.”

Trump’s new and disputed claims that Iran faces a looming oil infrastructure disaster come as gas prices have surged to $4.30 per gallon of regular Thursday morning, from a national average of under $3 before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February. Oil prices soared to their highest level since 2022, reaching $126 per barrel late Wednesday night before settling at $114 Thursday morning.

During the two-month conflict, the president and his administration have shifted their stated goals for the war and issued a succession of evolving and sometimes contradictory claims about when the Strait of Hormuz would open.

To some monitoring the war’s impact on global energy supplies, Trump’s predictions of imminently erupting pipelines looked like another policy position rooted more in hope than reality.

“We are banking on being saved by a silver bullet that is flawed in a number of ways,” said Brett Erickson, managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors, which specializes in financial crime, including the ways oil is routed to evade sanctions like those imposed on Iran.

“This is the latest theory of victory they have seized on, not because it makes a lot of sense, but because it is quick and easy and has a time frame they like,” Kelanic of Defense Priorities said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed in a post on X on Monday that there was already evidence that Iranian production had slowed. ““Iran’s creaking oil industry is starting to shut in production thanks to the U.S. BLOCKADE,” he wrote. “Pumping will soon collapse.”

A Treasury Department spokesperson said that Iran’s primary oil export hub on Kharg Island was close to reaching its storage capacity, forcing it to curb production. “This will cost Iran roughly $170 million per day in lost revenue and inflict lasting damage on its oil infrastructure,” the spokesperson said.

In a new analysis published Tuesday, Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy concluded that even if Iran does run out of storage space, it “will not cause catastrophic, or even very serious, damage” to its oil industry.

Oil facilities that stop pumping can experience a problem known as shut-in, which generally involves water and gas contaminating an oil reservoir, pushing reserves into rock where it can become permanently inaccessible. That can cause long-term damage but is not known for causing explosions.

Shipping data from TankerTrackers.com shows there are enough empty tankers inside the perimeter of the U.S. blockade at the Strait of Hormuz to hold some 45 million barrels of Iranian oil, or up to six weeks of usual Iranian export production. The regime also has millions of barrels of unused storage capacity inland, according to energy analytics firm Kpler.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament, taunted Trump and Bessent in a Wednesday post on X, writing: “3 days in, no well exploded. We could extend to 30 and livestream the well here.”

Supporters of the Trump administration’s claims say the critics are overlooking vulnerabilities in Iran’s infrastructure and access to oil storage.

Miad Maleki, a former senior sanctions official at the Treasury Department who is now a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said it was unclear whether the empty tankers now sitting off the coast of Iran were even equipped to hold its oil. Some may have owners from other countries who would be reluctant to fill their tankers with oil that will be stuck inside a U.S. blockade indefinitely, he said.

Even if every empty tanker and storage facility could be filled, he said, the process of turning off production takes weeks and may already be underway in Iran. He added that experts skeptical of Trump’s claims are underestimating the extent of the damage that Iran’s aging oil infrastructure could suffer if pumping stops.

“They are talking about Iran’s oil industry as if it were the U.S. industry,” said Maleki. “They don’t understand there has been no proper maintenance, and Iran does not have the tools and parts and technology it needs. The effect will be significantly worse than everyone thinks.”

Even if Iran does suffer negative consequences and opens the Strait of Hormuz relatively soon, relief for U.S. drivers at the pump or the people around the world dealing with increased energy costs will not come quickly. Fuel shortages in Asia have forced factory closures, and the price of fertilizer, made with natural gas, is soaring worldwide, meaning food prices will follow.

“The global oil shortage is already showing up on U.S. shores,” Finley of Rice University said, pointing to rapidly falling U.S. oil inventories. “The pain is building every day. Every day that strait is closed, the global oil situation gets more dire.”