BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA (By Pietro D. Pitts, Energy Analytics Institute, 18.Mar.2026, Words: 770) — If US president Donald Trump’s Iran strategy had worked as envisioned, we would not be staring at $100+ per barrel oil and gasoline near $3.80/gallon. So what went wrong?
RELATED ANALYSIS: THE MYTH OF THE QUICK RAMP-UP IN VENEZUELA
1. markets don’t believe in “easy” Venezuelan barrels
As discussed in detail in Energy Analytics Institute’s analysis “the myth of the quick ramp-up in Venezuela”, the OPEC country’s production system is not a quick‑response tool for a number of reasons:
