Iran, Oil and AI: the main topic Now

WTI touched $90 and Brent neared $96 after US strikes on Iranian targets reignited Strait of Hormuz fears. That oil shock is the main topic in a Bloomberg Podcast that connects the conflict to Venezuela supply and an AI data center fight at home.

Why oil jumped again

US forces struck Iranian targets overnight for the second time in three days, and Iran tried to hit back at US interests in Gulf states. The conflict has now passed the six month mark.

President Trump claimed on Truth Social that the US controls the Strait of Hormuz and floated renaming it the Trump Strait. Bloomberg correspondent Skyler Woodhouse said Trump has no public events scheduled to detail next steps beyond a closed meeting with travel industry executives.

The full discussion can be found on Bloomberg Podcast's YouTube channel.

Can Venezuela actually lower pump prices

Energy Secretary Chris Wright was in Caracas with Chevron's CEO as Chevron announced a $7 billion investment over five years in its Venezuelan joint ventures. Wright said production is already up 25 percent and exports up 50 percent at Trump speed, with one partner field at about 200,000 barrels per day.

The deal covers 17 fields and access to 65 billion barrels via a 100 year concession with interim authorities. Bloomberg Economics warned that the term creates political risk that could deter majors, since a future elected government may not honor it.

Refining is a bottleneck. Venezuelan crude is heavy, US refining capacity is tight, and diesel prices are near highs since the war began, partly because Ukrainian strikes have cut Russian refining.

What Congress did on funding

The House passed a continuing resolution to keep government funded through December 10. House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington said urgency remains for a four corner full year deal after 43 day and 76 day shutdowns last year that cut about 1.5 percent from Q4 GDP.

Arrington said he has little confidence the Senate returns a defense supplemental before the November midterms, despite the need to replenish munitions. He warned 10 year yields near 4.80 percent show shrinking fiscal space, with $2 trillion borrowed on a $7 trillion budget and half of that borrowing just to service debt.

What Lutnick wants from AI

At the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick hosted fireside chats with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier gave the AI industry a D minus for explaining its benefit to the public.

Lutnick recast data centers as education in a bottle. He argued communities that host them get more power built, lower local prices, and tax revenue, and he called complaints about water use misinformation.

He said early generation centers used water but newer closed loop systems do not. He also claimed the American AI stack sets the frontier while Chinese open source models trail as students learning from US teachers like OpenAI and Anthropic, after smoothing a prior rift with Anthropic co founder Tom Brown.

Why Canada talks collapsed

Lutnick said the US and Canada negotiated for six weeks and reached an agreement through President Trump and Prime Minister Mark Carney, with a signing set for Friday evening. Then Canadian counterparts asked late for heavy truck concessions.

Lutnick said Canada walked away for domestic politics, citing Quebec sovereignty pressures and Alberta independence talk, and denied language issues were ever a US demand. He said no near term deal is expected.

No US oil from Venezuela will move prices before midterms.