This was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.
Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, speaking at a Colorado natural gas plant Monday, said the United States would work to reduce rising energy prices due to the ongoing war in Iran.
The move comes as Colorado gas prices have surged — the average cost of regular gas in the Denver metro area is up by more than 50 cents in a week, according to AAA.
Wright said the United States was considering releasing crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a large cache along the Gulf Coast that currently holds more than 400 million barrels of oil for national emergencies.
Releasing and selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — in coordination with releases from other countries — could chip away at the global oil shortfall. Oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passageway near Iran, has nearly stopped because of the war.
That has sent prices of gasoline and natural gas soaring, primarily in Europe and Asia. But average gas prices across the United States are also up, according to AAA.
A sustained conflict could lead to even greater increases in gas prices.
“We do have our gasoline and our diesel and our jet fuel prices up — that hurts American citizens,” Wright told reporters at Xcel Energy’s Fort St. Vrain Generating Station, a massive natural-gas powered plant in Weld County.
“We are doing everything we can to alleviate that,” he added.
The last time the United States released oil from the reserve was in 2022, during the first few months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Wright also said that the US would use military vessels to escort tankers through the Strait and help offer insurance to tankers who attempt the passage. He said the US — now a leading producer of oil and natural gas — would not cut off its own fossil fuel exports to other countries in a bid to lower prices at home.
Wright said that the supply crunch would be just a “temporary disruption,” and would stop once the United States destroys Iran’s ability to attack other Middle Eastern countries.
But President Trump has sent mixed signals about how long military action would continue, which could complicate a drop in prices.
“We will look at ways to mitigate this price crunch that’s hurting all Americans,” Wright said.
Wright, Evans criticize Colorado climate goals
Wright, donning an Xcel hard-hat, appeared at Monday’s event alongside Republican Rep. Gabe Evans and Xcel Energy CEO Bob Frenzel. Xcel’s Weld facility is adding two new natural gas turbines to increase power production, which are set to go online next year.
Wright and Evans stressed that the Trump administration’s goal was to lower energy prices. That has not exactly been going to plan.
Utility bills for millions are growing faster than inflation, and may become an important issue in this year’s midterm elections.
State regulators and environmental groups caution that residential bills in Colorado could rapidly spike over the next five years, as Xcel builds new infrastructure to keep up with a growing demand for electricity.
Wright said that a “fundamental misunderstanding” of energy and climate change has pushed states to mandate more renewable energy on the grid, which he said is driving up electricity costs. He said that energy policy in Colorado has been “off track” for almost 10 years.
In that time, Colorado has set ambitious clean-energy targets — like requiring Xcel to generate 100% emissions-free electricity by 2050, and ordering all utilities to shutter their remaining coal plants by 2031.
“Electricity is the part that’s been infected with politics, with overregulation, with bureaucracy,” Wright said, while criticizing renewable energy targets.
It’s true that states with renewable standards, including California and Colorado, have seen the price of electricity spike, according to an October 2025 study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
But it’s nuanced. In California, factors like wildfire risk have also led to huge price increases. Swings in natural gas prices over the last five years have also driven up energy costs.
The same study also noted that utility-sized wind and solar projects are not driving up the price of power, specifically for projects built without renewable energy mandates and boosted by federal tax incentives.
Forcing coal plants to stay open
The Trump administration began phasing out federal tax credits for wind and solar projects last year, leaving companies like Xcel racing to take advantage of them. At the same time, the administration has propped up the coal industry, which is often an expensive way to generate power.
In December, Wright used federal emergency powers to order an aging Colorado coal plant known as Craig Unit 1 to stay open, even though it was damaged and was slated to permanently close the next day.
But the co-owners of Craig 1, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and the Platte River Power Authority, have pushed back against Wright’s order, saying that keeping the plant open would raise costs for their customers.
Wright did not directly answer questions about Craig 1, but claimed that a separate order requiring a Michigan coal plant to stay open has been cost-effective.
He also said that during recent cold snaps, keeping coal plants open has saved lives by continuing to send power to the grid and preventing blackouts.
“If we had let those coal power plants closed as they would've under a continued Democratic administration, hundreds of people would've died in the United States,” he said.
Environmental groups strongly disagreed with that assertion.
“Forcing old, unreliable coal plants to stay open past retirement has delivered two things for Americans: higher electricity bills and more toxic mercury pollution,” said Ted Kelly, U.S. Clean Energy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, in a statement.
The EDF has challenged the Trump administration’s orders to keep coal plants open.
“The administration’s claim that old coal plants are ‘reliable’ is almost as absurd as the myth that coal is ‘clean,’” Kelly added.
