For decades, conservatives argued that American energy independence was not an environmental indulgence or a political slogan — it was a national security imperative. They were told they were backwards, anti-science, and hostile to the future.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis has rendered that verdict obsolete.

What Dependence Looks Like

Look at what is happening to America’s allies and trading partners right now.

Europe gets 12 to 14 percent of its LNG from Qatar through the Strait of Hormuz. Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG plant — the world’s largest liquefaction facility — has been offline since it was attacked in early March. QatarEnergy declared force majeure on all export contracts. Europe, which emerged from winter with already-depleted gas storage, now faces a summer supply crunch it did not anticipate and cannot easily solve.

Japan and South Korea receive approximately 70 percent of their crude oil through the Strait. Their refineries were built to process Middle Eastern heavy crude — not American shale. They are scrambling for alternatives while paying $25 per million BTU for spot LNG, a price that makes normal economic activity difficult.

China received a third of its oil through the Strait. Beijing was partially insulated early on because Iran allowed Chinese-flagged ships conditional access — but the preferential treatment is unreliable and the supply volumes remain sharply reduced.

What Independence Looks Like

Now look at the United States.

American domestic gas prices have risen — painfully. There is no pretending otherwise. But the U.S. is the world’s largest oil producer and the world’s largest LNG exporter. Its energy supply chain does not route through Hormuz. Its export terminals face the Atlantic and Pacific. Its shale fields are in Texas, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania — not the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. is not immune to this crisis. But it is more insulated than any other major economy on earth. And it is positioned to benefit from it in ways that will reshape global energy relationships for years.

That insulation did not come from government foresight. It came from the American private sector — from frackers and roughnecks and engineers who developed shale technology over decades of unglamorous work, often against the opposition of regulators and environmental activists who would have preferred to leave it in the ground.

The Policy Lesson

The lesson of the Hormuz crisis for American foreign policy is simple: energy leverage matters. A nation that can supply what the world desperately needs is a nation with geopolitical power that no amount of diplomatic sophistication can replicate.

The Trump administration’s decision to expand drilling permits, restart offshore leasing, and push LNG export capacity is not recklessness. It is the responsible management of a strategic asset at exactly the moment the world has revealed how badly it needs one.

Allies are asking America for energy. That is power. Conservatives who argued for energy independence for thirty years were right. The crisis proved it.