American oil executives warned for months that the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz was bound to cause a fuel crisis. Now, they say it is here.

Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can't be tapped much further. Attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the Strait, stranding at least 2.5 million barrels a day from an already tight global oil market, analysts estimate.

"All these mechanisms helped to mitigate the price and supply risk," Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth said Friday at an energy conference in Austin, Texas. "Those have largely now played out, and we don't have nearly the buffers in the system that we did when it began."

It is hard to predict where oil prices will go, he added, but at the moment, it is difficult to envision prices coming back down quickly. "I wish I could tell you that I saw some reason why things would ease, but it's difficult right now to see that happen," he said.

Veteran energy advisers say that with no resolution to the Iran war in sight, the situation risks spinning out of control. Diesel prices have soared to a record $6.23 a gallon and gasoline prices, which slipped below $4 a gallon this summer, have rebounded to $4.32. Some energy analysts say they have been fielding investor questions about when consumers pinched by the high prices will start pulling back on new purchases.

The Trump administration has repeatedly promised Americans that prices at the pump would decline and that energy flows out of the Middle East would keep increasing.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at a Houston G-20 event on Monday that "the prices in the prior administration were this high anyway" and that Americans would have paid those prices permanently because former President Joe Biden was "pursuing a policy of energy subtraction and shutting down refineries."

"If you want to write about the prices, make sure you include the word 'temporary' because this is a temporary disruption," Burgum told reporters.

The White House sees two big levers it can pull to help ease prices: boosting production in Venezuela and increasing U.S. fuel-making capacity. In recent months, U.S. officials have focused on striking deals that are expected to bolster Venezuela's oil production. In early September, they met with U.S. refining executives to discuss raising the nation's fuel-making capacity. They are pleased with progress thus far on both fronts, a senior U.S. official said.

Energy executives and White House officials say they have had a continuing dialogue about the energy situation since the conflict broke out, and CEOs including Wirth talk to Energy Secretary Chris Wright frequently.

But Wirth said Friday that he hadn't talked to President Trump since Aug. 3, when the president said in a Truth Social Post that the CEO hadn't credited his administration for the oil industry's good fortunes. Trump called on Chevron and oil companies to bring "consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!"

Some CEOs and energy advisers say they have grown alarmed in recent weeks as the conflict has picked back up, with ships and energy infrastructure being targeted in both directions.

"The advantage in most negotiations usually goes to the side that has time on their side, and is willing to be patient," said Wil VanLoh, founder and CEO of Quantum Capital Group, during the Austin conference. Iran, he said, "is willing to suffer. Their people have already suffered a lot for many decades."

China is in part helping to fuel the global supply pinch. The world's largest oil importer for months had relied on its own stockpiles of crude for nearly half of its daily consumption, providing a reprieve for oil markets. But in recent weeks, it has resumed bigger purchases from international suppliers, analysts said.

U.S. crude prices have jumped 19% in the past three weeks to trade near $101 a barrel as attacks in the Middle East multiply. Iran has targeted oil tankers traversing the Strait, even after Trump and his lieutenants boasted about escorting several vessels undetected through the waterway. Houthi militants have recently launched attacks from Yemen on Saudi Arabia's infrastructure and military sites and damaged the East-West pipeline that stretched from the Abqaiq oil field to Yanbu al-Bahr, a major Saudi port city, on the Red Sea.

Trump has vowed to impose economic pressure on Iran and ruled out sending boots on the ground. He has said he expects the war will last until the November midterm elections, but investors say they believe the war will go well beyond that.

"That was the signal this is going to stretch on," said Dan Pickering, founder of Pickering Energy Partners, a financial firm.

Meanwhile, he said, diesel supplies are tight because of refinery outages following conflicts in the Middle East and Russia. Demand for the fuel is expected to increase as farmers that use it for heavy equipment enter harvest season. "Diesel has no easy solution," Pickering said.

Trump has said Ukraine must halt strikes on Russia that endanger global supplies of diesel.

In March, the CEOs of the three largest U.S. oil companies, ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, warned Trump officials, including Burgum and Wright, that a prolonged closure of the Strait could lead to a shortfall in refined products such as diesel, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Some executives have been privately critical of Trump's handling of the conflict.

At the conference Monday, Burgum rejected persistent speculation that the White House is seriously weighing a temporary ban on U.S. exports of refined products such as diesel. Trump's team, he said, doesn't believe such a move would quell prices.

"We will do anything that helps the price at home," Burgum said. "But we're also going to be smart about it, and not just have some idea that if we stop exporting, that somehow magically is going to help the prices."