Burgum made an appearance on this Friday’s The Story with Martha MacCallum, and here’s the exchange between Burgum and guest host Aishah Hasnie, where Burgum tried to portray people like American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers as just a “pundit,” before pretending the price of gas increasing in California had nothing at all to do with Israel and Trump’s attack on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz being closed.
HASNIE: Let me bring this up to you. This is a Washington Post report where they spoke to some industry executives, and this was an interesting part that I want you to respond to. They said: “Industry officials say they are doing everything they can to sound an alarm that prices are about to soar, as the commercial and government inventories that have mitigated price rises so far are rapidly depleting. Some inventories could be wiped out within weeks, the executives have warned, coinciding with the peak summer travel season.”
How would you respond to those industry executives, sir?
BURGUM: Well, I’d say everyone’s got their perspective, but we’ve had a lot of pundits who have been completely wrong on this from the beginning. Remember back when this started, people had extreme forecasts that they were sure was going to happen. And when it didn’t happen, they said, “Oh, it’s going to be really high next month,” and “it’s going to be really high in two weeks.” None of that has happened, and we’re seeing the markets go down right now.
The markets are very smart. The markets understand inventories. The markets don’t just reflect what one executive may understand about their own situation or their own supply chains — they reflect the global picture. We know there are supplies stockpiled in lots of places. There are a lot of barrels afloat around the world. And of course, the production we have today can go even higher.
So I’m very confident. We showed last year, under President Trump’s leadership, that we can drive energy prices down at home, and we can do that again with the Strait open.
We have more production now than we had last year — as you opened this report with — more oil, more LNG. And LNG is never part of the story. Natural gas prices have barely moved in the United States during this entire event. It was three bucks at the beginning, and it’s three bucks now, while Europe is paying $15.
So if you’re asking what this means for the economy in this country — all the capital that’s going to flow to our country, because of lower taxes, lower regulation, the lowest energy prices in the world, and the most secure supply chains for energy — the United States has won this energy war.
HASNIE: Well, let me ask you this, Secretary. If for some reason this deal does not go through this weekend, or next week, and Iran backs out for whatever reason — we know the White House is doing everything it can right now to bring gas prices down. We’re tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Is there a backup plan? Is there something you have up your sleeve to get through the summer months?
BURGUM: Well, one thing you’re seeing — I have to smile every time I see the national average for gasoline on a screen, because it’s a bit like a weather reporter saying, “Here’s the temperature in America tomorrow: 46 degrees.”
It’s not a criticism of Fox, but the price of gasoline varies across our whole country, largely right now by state policy and state taxes, not by the underlying fundamentals.
The underlying fundamentals — as you opened with — are that we’re producing and exporting more oil than we ever have, and producing more natural gas than we ever have. We are an abundant nation. But about half the states that went down the path of over-rotating toward energy transition — moving away from affordable, reliable, secure American energy toward intermittent, highly subsidized, weather-dependent sources — have substantially higher energy prices than the states that didn’t.
So I think we’re going to see prices continue to drop across the country, but unevenly. Take California, for example. California was importing 60 percent of its oil from foreign countries two months ago.
California was dependent on oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz. No other state besides Hawaii had that condition. That was self-inflicted. And on top of that, California is shutting down refineries — they used to have 40, and they’re heading toward six. Texas has 38 refineries.
And who has the most internal combustion vehicles? California. They’re going to have high gas prices. You can thank Gavin Newsom and the state legislature for the policies they put in place — that has nothing to do with the Strait of Hormuz.
There is no “backup plan.” We’ll see if the gaslighting continues once the prices continue to skyrocket and reality runs head-on into their lies.
