Secretary Wright joins Fox News's Mike Emanuel - March 23th, 2025

Fuel, gasoline, energy is down, way down, oil is down to $65 a barrel, it was $82 a barrel. And when energy comes down, pricing is going to come down, prices for groceries, et cetera, are going to come down. President Trump promising prices will come down once America's energy market is stabilized. Joining me now to discuss the President's energy agenda is the Energy Secretary, Chris Wright. Mr. Secretary, welcome. Welcome. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. So let's start with the prices. For crude, it's come down already. It was $77.88 on January 17th, it was $68.30 this past week, that's a drop of 13%. Gasoline prices, the average for a gallon of gas is $3.12, it was $3.53 a year ago. Is bringing those prices down critical for unleashing the American economy? It is. It's just energy is that base ingredient that makes everything possible. You lower energy prices and you lower the cost of everything. And I think the market's a discounting mechanism. People see a president that's not going to spend his administration trying to block the production of oil and gas, and that implies more supply. And the market is recognizing that, and we're seeing prices move down already on that signal. Senator Bernie Sanders does not care for the President's approach. Let's play him. Donald Trump may think that climate change is a hoax. We're going to pass a green jobs program. We can create millions of jobs, transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel. What about that? Yeah, so look, I went to college when I was 17 years old to work on fusion energy because we were running out of oil and gas. I worked on solar after that and then geothermal. So I'm not an oil and gas guy by background. There has been this belief or this desire to get rid of hydrocarbons for a long time. 1973, 50 years ago, the world got 85 percent of its energy from hydrocarbons, oil, gas and coal. The last full year we have data, 85 percent of the energy from hydrocarbons. So despite trillions of dollars investment in Bernie's Green New Deal, wind, solar and batteries together, they're 3 percent of global energy. It just turns out it's very hard to replace hydrocarbons. Not that we shouldn't want new energy sources, but hard to replace hydrocarbons. China's going all in on artificial intelligence. Running A.I. requires tremendous energy. How are we competing on that front, Mr. Secretary? Yes, so China today is by far the world's largest importer of energy and the United States is by far the world's largest producer of energy. So we're really in a fantastic situation despite the four years of the Biden administration trying to suppress those advantages. But we have over the last 20 years pushed too many energy intensive industries out of our country and they've mostly gone to China or elsewhere in Asia. But the next energy intensive industry is A.I., where we take electricity, the highest form and most expensive form of energy, and make intelligence. The demand for intelligence is unlimited. So will the demand for energy. And it's critical for national security. We have to win the A.I. race and stay ahead of China, not just for our economy and our citizens, but for the security of our country. We can and we will stay ahead of China and win it. But you're right. Energy is absolutely central to that. The United States has tremendous natural gas resources. What about the impact of exporting natural gas around the globe? Yeah, 15 years ago, we were the largest importer of natural gas in the world. Today we're the largest exporter in 15 years. That's technology. That's the American shale revolution. And we're doing it with 90 percent less drilling rigs than we had running 15 years ago. It is America's greatest energy advantage. So we've become the largest exporter of natural gas by pipeline to Mexico, but mostly via ship liquefied natural gas. And the Biden administration put a pause on LNG exports 14 months ago, January of 2024, sending a message to the world. Maybe the U.S. isn't going to continue to grow our exports. Think of the extra leverage that gives Russia, the extra fear that gives the Europeans or the Asians that are dying for more American energy. And they did this in spite of their own study that showed increasing LNG exports would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and have a negligible impact on price. But I think the politics of opposing hydrocarbons just got the best of them. And in spite of a study that said the opposite, they took an action destructive for America, destructive for world security. As you know, the president's looking for a way to end the war in Ukraine. You propose the idea that Americans could go and run some of the energy resources in Ukraine. Would you explain that? Yeah, well, this is our president's idea. And look, I think it's tremendous. Our president is all in on peace. What's the creative way we can get two sides to lay down arms and stop selling and stop killing each other? He's had a couple of ideas. One is develop Ukraine's resources together. That's a win for Ukraine and a win for the United States. And more recently is we could take over the United States running the nuclear power plants in Ukraine. And they are very large plants. The U.S. has the greatest we've been the gold standard of running and operating nuclear power plants and constructing them. That would work beautifully. Of course, America could do that. And if that's a way to entwine the United States into Ukraine in a peaceful, non-military way and bring peace to the world, I'd be all in to execute on that mission. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, thank you for your time today. I hope you'll come back. Thanks for having me.