By Chelsey Dulaney and Jason Douglas
The war in the Middle East has bolstered America's status as an energy-exporting powerhouse, with Asia and Europe clamoring for every shipment of U.S. crude, natural gas and jet fuel they can get.
U.S. exports of crude and petroleum products rose to a record last week, nearly 12.9 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Shipments of liquefied-natural gas have also jumped, according to ship-tracking firm Kpler, with exports setting an all-time high last month.
The frenzy shows no signs of slowing: More than 60 empty crude supertankers were steaming toward the Gulf Coast as of Wednesday, roughly triple prewar levels and a sign that U.S. exports will only rise further in the months ahead.
President Trump has celebrated the U.S.'s growing footprint in global energy trade, reinforcing the "energy dominance" strategy his administration is pursuing. The U.S. this month nearly flipped to a net exporter of crude for the first time in weekly government data going back to 2001. (It became a net gas exporter in 2017 thanks to the shale-fracking boom).
But the U.S. will face obstacles turning wartime demand into a longer-term boost, according to energy experts. In Asia, overhauling energy infrastructure to process U.S. crude would be costly. Europe has grown increasingly worried about its reliance on the U.S. as relations between Trump and political leaders reach new lows.
"The fear is that the U.S., especially under Trump, uses it as political leverage," said Henning Gloystein, managing director for energy at Eurasia Group. "That the U.S. abuses that supply dependency for its advantage on climate politics, on NATO, on security, on tariffs."
For now, countries have few other choices. Higher exports from the U.S. have helped to offset -- but not eliminate -- the supply chasm created by the throttling of the Strait of Hormuz.
More than 10 million barrels a day of oil and petroleum products -- some 10% of global supply -- are stuck in the thoroughfare. The U.S. has also emerged as a much-needed source of products like jet and cooking fuel that have been severely disrupted by the war.
Asia, which relies most heavily on fuel from the Middle East, has been eager to buy more U.S. energy. Countries like Japan, which gets almost 95% of its oil imports from the region, have responded to the conflict by seeking closer ties with U.S. suppliers.
In March, U.S. firms signed $56 billion of energy deals with investors in Asia during a forum in Tokyo hosted by U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
"We need to sell energy to our friends and allies so they don't have to buy from adversaries, so they don't have to be dependent on sources of energy that can be controlled," Burgum said.
U.S. exports to Asia of crude and LNG have risen around 30% in March and April, compared with the same period a year ago, according to Kpler.
"I don't think we are ever going to see Japan be 90% dependent on Gulf oil ever again," said William Chou, deputy director of the Japan chair at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Asian countries are limited in how much U.S. energy they can process by infrastructure mismatches. Asian refineries are built to process denser and more sulfurous crude oil from the Middle East, not the lighter U.S. equivalent. Refineries can use lighter grades but the processing isn't as efficient or profitable.
Overhauling Asia's refineries would require expensive modifications that would take "months to engineer and years to fully implement," said Parul Bakshi, a research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
The U.S. is facing its own constraints. Major oil-export facilities in Texas and Louisiana are nearing the physical limits of their capability to fill up more tankers. A new LNG export terminal on the Gulf Coast sent its first shipment this week, with Belgium listed as its destination, but is expected to take until 2027 to reach full capacity.
By the time new infrastructure comes online, U.S. energy might have lost some of its appeal for overseas buyers. The cost and time of shipping energy from the U.S. has historically made it less attractive to Asian buyers. Once the Strait reopens and Middle Eastern prices normalize, "oil and gas from the U.S. is no longer as attractive," said Tsuneo Watanabe, senior fellow at the Tokyo-based think tank Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
For Europe, the war has intensified efforts to shift to renewable energy. But that takes time, and the continent stands to deepen its reliance on U.S. energy in the meantime.
The European Union embraced U.S. LNG after Russia throttled natural-gas supplies to the Continent as punishment for its support for Ukraine. The bloc now gets around 60% of its LNG from the U.S., though its share of total natural-gas imports -- including piped gas -- is lower, at about 25%, according to the European Commission.
Trump's threats to take control of Greenland in January ignited fears about the reliability of U.S. supplies. EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen said at the time, "We risk replacing one dependency with another."
The Trump administration has since leveraged U.S. LNG exports in trade negotiations, with the U.S. ambassador to the EU warning last month that the bloc could lose favorable access to gas unless it approved a stalled trade deal.
For now, Europe needs U.S. LNG to refill its natural-gas storage tanks, which came into the war at multiyear lows, before next winter. The Continent has also turned to the U.S. to replace jet fuel it would normally get from the Middle East.
Europe is also likely to rely on U.S. gas to replace lost shipments from Qatar, whose Ras Laffan LNG hub was damaged in the war, according to Eurasia's Gloystein.
"Countries will buy more U.S. LNG because it's the only additional LNG that's coming to market," he said. "Whether they like it or not, they will do it."
Write to Chelsey Dulaney at chelsey.dulaney@wsj.com and Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 24, 2026 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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