Larry Johnson: If the Strait of Hormuz Is Gushing, Why Is Trump Raiding Europe’s Diesel Tanks?
by Larry Johnson [10-2-2026] Larry C. Johnson(bio).
Donald Trump would like you to know that the Strait of Hormuz is in tremendous shape. Possibly the best shape in its history. On September 27, he told reporters that “last night, we took a record amount of oil out of the Hormuz Strait, more than we took out before the war.” Three days later he was back with an even bigger number: “We took more oil out of the Hormuz Strait over the last couple days than at any point in history.” In his telling, the oil is pouring out of the Gulf in quantities that would make the shahs blush.
So here is a question for the White House. If the oil is flowing like never before, why did the President of the United States spend this week threatening America’s closest allies with a diesel embargo unless they emptied their emergency tanks?
That is not a rhetorical flourish. That is what happened. On Thursday, Trump told reporters his administration “may” ask European countries to release their diesel stocks, shortly after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged Europe to tap its reserves “immediately.” Washington had already gone country by country, warning that governments which refused could face a ban on U.S. diesel exports. By Friday, the G7 had agreed to release 100 million barrels over four months, with a frontloaded diesel release in the first 20 days. Trump announced that Europe had agreed to release “a massive amount of their heavily stocked diesel oil.” Mission accomplished, again.
A record that isn’t
The problem with a record is that someone eventually checks it. Trump’s own Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, let the air out of the boast on September 26. He said there had been a day “where over 20 million barrels of oil, more than pre-conflict levels, flowed out of the straits,” then added the inconvenient part: “The running average today is almost 13 million barrels a day.” About 20 million barrels a day moved through Hormuz before the war. Thirteen million is roughly 77% of normal by industry estimates, not a record, and that’s on the administration’s own numbers.
Wright has form here. In early September he claimed “over 17 million barrels” had passed through the strait in a single day, and analytics firms that track tanker traffic promptly rebutted him. The trick is simple: pick your best day, call it a record, and hope nobody asks about the other 29 days in the month. Energy analyst Karl W. Miller has warned against exactly this sleight of hand: a single high-volume sailing day cannot establish a sustained export rate. Neither can a press gaggle.
There is a second problem the President never mentions. Even if every one of those crude barrels were real, crude is not diesel. Miller’s research shows the Gulf’s refined-product exports recovering far more slowly than its crude. Hormuz product exports excluding LPG were reported at about 1 million barrels a day in mid-September, against about 4 million before the war. The International Energy Agency puts Middle East net diesel exports at 390,000 barrels a day in August, just over a quarter of prewar levels. You cannot run a truck on a press release, and you cannot run it on Saudi crude either until somebody refines it.
Europe’s arithmetic
To understand why Washington has Europe over a barrel, start with how much diesel Europe burns. Europe’s diesel demand is typically around 5 million barrels a day. It fuels the trucks that move its goods, the tractors that plant its crops and, as winter approaches, the furnaces that heat millions of homes. European refineries can’t cover all of it. Running flat out, EU refineries could produce roughly 4.5 to 5 million barrels a day of diesel and gasoil, and they are already running close to their maximum. The gap is filled by imports, which normally cover 10% to 15% of demand but set the price for the whole market. Kpler puts the EU’s diesel imports from outside the bloc at about 580,000 barrels a day this year. Britain is far more exposed: it imports more than half the diesel it uses.
Those imports used to come from Russia and the Gulf. Russia is gone: Europe embargoed Russian diesel in 2023, and Ukrainian drones have since left Russian refineries in no position to export much anyway. The Gulf is crippled. That leaves the United States. Since March, America has supplied more than half of Europe’s imports, including more than two-thirds in August and September.
That is the leverage. Europe’s last 10-15% of diesel, the part that sets every price at every pump from Lisbon to Warsaw, now arrives largely on American tankers. When the White House threatens an export ban, it isn’t threatening a marginal supplier. It is threatening the margin itself.
Follow the diesel
If the Gulf were truly back in business, none of this would be necessary. Europe would be buying its diesel there, as it did before the war. Instead, American refineries are running near their limits, East Coast inventories hit record lows this summer, and Bessent now complains that “American farmers, truckers, and businesses should not be left carrying the burden of a global diesel shortage.”
A global diesel shortage. Note the phrase. It comes from the same administration that says the strait is in “extremely good shape.” Either the oil is flowing in record volumes and there is no shortage, or there is a shortage because the oil isn’t flowing. The administration is selling both stories at once and hoping its customers don’t compare the receipts.
A bridge to nowhere
Defenders of the release will point out that Europe’s reserves are substantial. They are. EU countries and Britain held about 52 million tonnes of gasoil and diesel in June, including nearly 38 million tonnes of emergency reserves, roughly two months of European consumption. That is enough to bridge a disruption. It is not enough to bridge a structural deficit, and a structural deficit is what Europe faces.
Miller’s work makes the point plainly. The Gulf shock is a double hit: refineries abroad have lost the Gulf crude they were built to run, and the Gulf’s own refineries have lost much of their ability to export finished fuel. Restoring the most heavily damaged Gulf facilities could take up to five years, in an active war zone where any new attack can destroy completed repairs. Reopening the strait does not reopen a damaged refinery. The IEA reaches the same conclusion on a shorter horizon: diesel markets will remain undersupplied in the coming months unless demand softens rapidly, and the seasonal rise in middle-distillate demand this autumn is running at twice the usual rate.
Against that, a two-month reserve is not a cushion. It is the last line of defense. As one Kpler analyst put it, any further release only buys time, because global diesel supply is still below global demand. Spend it now, and Europe enters a multi-year shortage with its insurance already cashed.
A fragile system
The fragility isn’t theoretical. On Wednesday, a high-pressure separator ruptured in the coker hydrotreater unit at the Mangalore refinery in southern India, killing one worker and injuring at least eight. The unit lost was a small one, and the refinery kept running. But look at why it happened when it did: India has been pushing its plants above normal operating rates to offset the fuel shortage caused by the Iran war. Refineries everywhere are being run harder and longer than they were designed for, and equipment run that way fails.
Every barrel that disappears from Asia tightens the market Europe would turn to if American supplies stopped. India, the Gulf, Russia: one by one, Europe’s alternatives to the United States are being knocked out. That is why Europe’s negotiating position is so weak. It isn’t bargaining with Washington. It is taking orders.
Why the urgency? Look at the calendar. Trump is trying to bring down fuel prices ahead of November’s midterm elections. He even cooled on the export ban he was threatening, worried about what it would do to gasoline prices at home. The threat was never really about Europe’s welfare or the global market. It was about getting European barrels into the Atlantic basin before American voters reach the polls, and about getting America’s allies to spend their insurance policy so the White House doesn’t have to admit its policy has failed.
The contradiction
So we have a President who says more oil than ever is coming out of the Gulf, and who simultaneously threatens to cut off Europe unless it drains its own emergency stocks. Both cannot be true. If the first were true, the second would be unnecessary. The ultimatum to Europe is the most honest statement the administration has made about Hormuz in months. It tells us what Wright’s averages and the IEA’s numbers already told us: the strait is not fixed, the Gulf’s refineries are not back, and Washington knows it.
Trump can keep announcing records. Europe’s diesel tanks are where the real accounting is being done.