Top Trump Advisor Says Not to Worry About Draining Oil Reserves As New Pipelines Can Just Be Built

Kevin Hassett, President Donald Trump’s director of the National Economic Council , joined CNBC on Friday morning and pressed on whether or not the U.S. is facing a potential energy crisis as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and oil reserves are drained. Hassett offered a cheery assessment of the situation, going so far as to say a new oil pipeline can be built if the strait never reopens.

Anchor David Faber asked Hassett to begin the conversation, “You know, when it comes to the other side of things, in terms of inflation and at least some of the commentary that we’ve heard from oil executives and the like, if things continue in Iran, if where they are in the strait continues to be largely closed, there does seem to be a lot of concern about inventories and the fact that we could see far higher oil prices. How are you figuring that?”

Hassett replied, “Oh, you know, for sure, like eventually you run into a problem with inventories. There are very ample inventories right now. We follow them every day. You know, there’s both government inventories and private inventories in the billions of barrels. They have been running down. I’d say we’re about a billion barrels short from where we should have been if the straits had been open the whole time. But that’s something that can be refilled if we can get the strait open in a reasonable amount of time.”

Carl Quintanilla then jumped in, “If that doesn’t happen, though, do we end up in this tank-bottom scenario if we get through June with no relief?”

Hassett replied, “Well, I wouldn’t say that the inventory problem starts to be a problem in June. I think it’s quite a bit farther down the road than that. But absolutely, at some point, if oil prices stay high forever and ever, then there’s inflation and then higher prices. But that’s not what our expectation is. And indeed, even if the straits stay closed, what will happen is they’ll start building pipelines to get into the Red Sea and so on. And so markets adjust to these things.”

Watch the clip above via CNBC.

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