US Energy Secretary Wright says will continue to get better at escorting Hormuz traffic

• US is playing long game.
• US improving Hormuz shipping escorts.
• Middle East oil flows not fully restored.

Escort operations through Hormuz are a recurring fixture of Gulf tension cycles, and the historical pattern is consistent: naval convoying reduces the risk of seizure or attack but does not by itself restore flows, since the binding constraint is usually commercial rather than military. War-risk insurance premia, charter rates and the willingness of flag states and owners to run the strait have typically lagged the security announcement, and traffic recovers only as those costs retrace. The distinction worth drawing is between flows that are physically possible and flows that are economically rational: 'not fully restored' situates this in the latter camp. The acknowledgment that the US is playing a long game implies the disruption is being treated as structural rather than a short-lived incident, which in past episodes has kept a residual premium embedded in freight and insurance long after headline risk fades. The tells are tanker transits through the strait, loadings at Gulf terminals, and the war-risk premium quoted in the marine market rather than any further official commentary. Remarks of this kind from an energy secretary carry weight as an operational signal but little as a de-escalation one.