Analyst says millions of barrels of Gulf oil remain shut in beyond Hormuz focus

Global attention stays fixed on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, but petroleum geologist Art Berman told Fox News Digital the longer energy risk may be underground.

Berman, a consultant with more than four decades in the industry, said millions of barrels of Persian Gulf production remain shut in and that restoring those wells is not like flipping a switch. He put current Gulf shut-ins near 8 million barrels a day and said world production is down about 10 million barrels a day. "This is potentially a kind of a world-changing event, even if we resolve the political issues," he said.

His estimate lines up broadly with the International Energy Agency. In its Aug. 12 Oil Market Report, the IEA said Gulf oil production rose by another 2.5 million barrels a day in July to 23.9 million, still 8.3 million below pre-war levels. Global supply remained 6.3 million barrels a day below year-earlier levels.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration offered a lower July shut-in average of about 5.5 million barrels a day and warned Hormuz transit limits forced a higher August shut-in forecast. EIA expects patterns to move back toward pre-conflict conditions in early 2027, while saying some Gulf producers may not fully regain prior output in the forecast window.

A White House official, speaking on background, pointed to lower oil prices after a memorandum of understanding and said Hormuz is open with a U.S. naval blockade in effect. Berman's point is narrower: even if tankers move, fields that stayed offline can take months to restart, and some may never fully recover. That upstream gap, he argues, matters more for long-term prices than daily debates over how many tankers cleared the strait.