dan briet sir welcome and good morning
to you
good morning jackie great to be with you
and great to be with you um the previous
administration
focused on making america energy
independent it was a priority
and in fact it was a goal that was
achieved and now we're seeing
this administration put the priority and
focus on green energy but what's
happening in texas right now
is sort of the perfect storm right
showing where uh
alternative energy can fall short and
why we need more of a balance and we
need to still rely
on regular energy as we've seen it in in
the past decades
that's exactly right jackie what we're
seeing today is an avoidable tragedy
in the previous administration under the
leadership of president trump what he
directed me to do what he
directed my predecessor to do uh
secretary rick perry
was to produce all forms of energy here
in america so it's not only that we
produced
more energy in america we produced
different forms of energy that included
fossil energy
it included things like natural gas and
oil here in america we're now the
largest producer
of those products in the world the
important thing about what we're seeing
in texas today
is that we need diverse energy supply so
as you mentioned uh earlier the weather
is is certainly uh
behind some of this but the weather is
not the cause of the tragedy it's the
policies that we've decided to follow
and what i mean by that is we've moved
away from what is known as base load
electricity
and we've moved to intermittent and
sometimes unreliable renewable energy
and that technology is not yet ready for
prime time
and when it comes to looking at the
energy industry from a global lens so
many people like to say that america
contributes to pollution through fossil
fuels but you know from where i'm
sitting i can look at other countries
like
china and india for example who are not
following
the rules to reducing admissions we
actually came out of the paris agreement
and we
were still doing it there is a case to
be made here
for pursuing traditional energy
to alternative energy and still being
able to reduce your carbon footprint and
do the right thing
that's exactly right jackie what we've
seen here in america's reduction in
carbon emissions at the same time
that we have grown the world's largest
economy we've had the largest reduction
in carbon emissions of any country in
the world
certainly any signatory to the paris
accords and the way we've done that is
to develop technologies that allow us to
produce things like natural gas
here in america very very cheaply and
natural gas is much less carbon intense
than some of the other fuel sources that
are being used
in places like china and as we see the
world transition
we would hope that they would transition
to the use of some cases
american lng american natural gas and
that will again
lessen the carbon intensity all around
the world
and let's talk about gas prices the
national average for a gallon of regular
is increasing here it's over
dollars and fifty cents so when i look
at oil prices rising and i look at the
price that consumers are going to pay at
the pump
um 252 right now in the winter when
people really are not out on the road in
earnest and it's risen so much it's
higher than it was
at this time last year when the economy
was fully
functioning and i say to myself it could
be close to three dollars
in the summer when the driving season
peaks and that is a tax on consumers
it really is and the reason we're seeing
that today is because some of the
refineries are shut down and we can't
move the product
from the oil wells to the actual
consumer because of the lack of
infrastructure in some cases or in some
cases
we've made the gas line the gas pipeline
infrastructure depended upon this
renewable energy
and as a result we can't move the gas to
the consumers and we can't move the oil
to the consumers
which is creating a lack of supply and
driving up the prices
in america we have to be careful we may
have it exactly backwards
renewable energy today is dependent upon
base load electricity
which is provided by natural gas coal
and nuclear
and if we're not careful and we make
that base load electricity dependent
upon renewable power
we're not going to move the product to
market and prices are going to spike
i want to talk to you about the dakota
access pipeline the future
right now at stake energy advocates
worry that the biden and revoking
contracts for the keystone xl pipeline
this is a project that's up for review
on april 9th it should
you know should the feds shut it down it
would force north dakota to find a new
more expensive way to transport
roughly 570 000 barrels of oil per day
dan when i look at this and i see
pipelines shutting down or projects not
moving forward i covered energy for a
long time
you need the infrastructure to move oil
around
we can be the world's top producer of
energy we were
but you need to be able to distribute
that oil to make it worthwhile
and to make it valuable and so shutting
pipelines down is essentially shutting
the industry down
that's exactly right jackie it's not
only shutting the infrastructure down
like what we're seeing the biden
administration do today
potentially with the dakota access
pipeline it's shutting down the
production for instance on
on federal lands all across the country
what has made us the world's largest
producer of natural gas and oil is one
technology development innovation
not regulation and also our ability to
produce on these lands
so when i look across these policies i
wonder what's going to happen in places
like north dakota
importantly places like new mexico where
one-third
one-third of their budget is dependent
upon the production of oil and gas
and the revenues that come from it so we
have we have some serious challenges
here in the southwest part of the united
states
uh that's going to be interesting to
watch over the course of the next few
weeks and months
and what about as our production comes
down national security i mean that was
something that former president trump
really focused on as well
if we could be energy independent then
we wouldn't have to rely on our foes for
oil and as you see us scaling back
production
not only because of the pandemic but
also because energy companies are scared
of the policies
that are to come right now we're going
to see more reliance on foreign nations
middle eastern producers we had walked
back from that
we had opec answering to us
that's exactly right so you know what
what happened over the course of the
last few years is because we've been
able to become energy independent
foreign policy options were available to
president trump and any future president
who chooses
to continue a true all-of-the-above
energy policy
what we saw happen for instance the
movement of the israel of the
embassy in israel from tel aviv to
jerusalem could not have happened a
decade ago
because we were completely dependent
upon the provision of oil from the
middle east
so the ability and the freedom to make
those types of foreign policy decisions
are a direct result of our national
security energy security
and ultimately our national security and
our energy independence
dan brian great to see you this morning
great conversation thank you
good to see you jackie great to be with
you