Entire Team of Oil and Gas Experts Got DOGE’d Before Iran War

The war in Iran has led to a worldwide energy crisis, with oil experts from the Persian Gulf being blocked by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. 

Despite this being a cornerstone of Iranian defense for decades, the Trump administration seems to have been caught off guard, and a major reason is that the State Department no longer has any oil and gas experts, having fired them last July as part of reduction-in-force efforts, NOTUS reports. 

A total of 1,300 people were laid off from the State Department last summer, and the Bureau of Energy Resources was hit hard. The people fired were responsible for planning scenarios if the strait was ever closed, and others had professional relationships with oil and gas companies in the Middle East as well as with foreign diplomats who deal with energy concerns. The only people left in the bureau, ironically, are people who work with clean energy and critical minerals. 

“I’m sure Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio wishes he had that expertise available today,” Geoffrey Pyatt, who served as assistant secretary of state for energy resources during the Biden administration, told NOTUS. “Most of that institutional knowledge was lost with the elimination of the bureau and RIFs last fall.”

That expertise would be critical right now as oil and gas prices skyrocket around the world due to the closure of the strait and  attacks on oil and gas infrastructure in the region. Several former State Department officials who worked on energy told  NOTUS that the administration’s lack of preparedness before striking Iran is clearly apparent. 

“Before any of this should have happened, there should have been discussion about what are the implications of this, and what happens when the Strait of Hormuz turns off,” a former Bureau of Energy Resources staffer said. Other former staffers who now work for oil and gas companies said they don’t have clear points of contact in the Trump administration who they can discuss concerns with. 

Publicly, Trump has been dumbfounded by Iran’s response to U.S. and Israeli attacks. 

“They weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. Those missiles were set to go after them. So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that,” Trump said Monday. The president fails to realize that he fired the people who likely did expect and plan for that exact scenario.