March 23, 2026
WHEN: Today, Monday, March 23, 2026
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”
Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” (M-F, 9AM-11AM ET) today, Monday, March 23. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/03/23/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-u-s-energy-secretary-chris-wright.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
DAVID FABER: All right, that was the president. And he spoke moments ago to reporters, of course, about talks with Iran about ending the war, reaching a cease-fire, a deal in which he did say there's 15 points of agreement, much of it around, of course, the denuclearization, or at least the -- even ending the efforts in that country to obtain a nuclear weapon. Let's bring in Energy Secretary Chris Wright for a first-on-CNBC interview with our Brian Sullivan. They are both at CERAWeek's energy conference in Houston. Brian, take it away.
BRIAN SULLIVAN: David and Sara, thank you very much. We are pleased to be joined by the U.S. Energy Secretary, Chris Wright. Secretary Wright, thanks for joining us. I -- the president just made those comments that, if you get a deal, price of oil is going to drop like a rock. I know you have been in touch with him. You have been in touch with your colleagues around the world, the IEA and more. Are we close to some kind of a deal? And do we even know in Iran who to negotiate with?
CHRIS WRIGHT: Well, if you look at the military campaign in the first three weeks, President Trump's leadership, General Caine of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they have just done a tremendous job. So we are rapidly eliminating Iran's ability to project power to its neighbors. You saw their attempts at longer-range missiles. This conflict is critical to remove the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East, the greatest killer of American soldiers over the last two decades, and the campaign's going well. So, when the campaign's going well, the other side is thinking, ah maybe there's another way to achieve the same end. And what I love about President Trump, he sets a bold objective, but he's always open for negotiations. If there's a better, simpler way to get the same place we want to get, we're all ears.
SULLIVAN: But do you think that we can even know who to negotiate with? It's entirely possible we're speaking with people in Iran, and other people in Iran, who claim they're the real leaders because we have no idea what's going on, that we're negotiating with different groups about different things, and that's going to impact the ultimate outcome and the price of energy.
WRIGHT: There has been quite a bit of turnover in their energy leadership. So I see where you're going there, Brian. And that's one of the things we will learn in these dialogues. Who is in power? Are they in power? How is it working? But, again, always open for dialogues. There seems to be legitimate interest. If we can get to the right place, we will do it. But we're going to find out who the leaders are and what their authorities are.
SULLIVAN: So the price -- the president said the price of oil will drop like a rock, and it already is. The price of oil is down a lot today, but we're at 89 and change. We're not at 59. We're not at 69. If and when we get a real resolution to this war, whether that's today, tomorrow, or months from now, Mr. Secretary, what are your various scenarios for the price of oil? Because the CEO of United Airlines just said they think we're planning for the possibility of $175 oil.
WRIGHT: Yes, I think that's a business leader being very careful. Fuel costs are massive costs for all the airlines. They have -- yes, I think he's being prudent in planning ahead. We certainly don't expect that scenario to unfold. I think that's highly unlikely, but that's what you do when you're leading a business. I think, fortunately, we went into this conflict, thanks to President Trump, with just massive American oil production, good relations with our neighbors overseas. The Saudis, for example, prepositioned almost 100 million barrels of oil storage out of the Middle East before this conflict began. They didn't know exactly what the plans were, but, obviously, they could see tensions rising. They positioned oil overseas. You know, the previous administration wouldn't even talk to them or engage with them.
SULLIVAN: Yes, 100 million is a lot, but it's only one day of global production. That's kind of what we use every day.
WRIGHT: Yes, but it's not the global -- what matters is the degree of the interruption, right? And this is a large interruption, you know, round numbers, maybe as much as 15 million barrels a day. So, 100 million barrels I look at as a week. That's an extra week beyond global stocks, beyond floating storage, beyond our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
SULLIVAN: Sara?
SARA EISEN: Secretary Wright, it's Sara Eisen in the studio. President Trump just suggested that, under these negotiations, we could see a scenario where the U.S. and Iran jointly control the Strait of Hormuz. I'm curious how that would work and what the plan is.
WRIGHT: Well, look, these are early on in the negotiations. I certainly don't want to get ahead of the president there, Sara. But, clearly, the world has seen allowing Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz, as they have on and off for decades, is just an unacceptable outcome. We need to have an end with some surety that you can have free flow of shipping traffic in and out of the straits, not just for the United States, but for all the Gulf nations, certainly all the nations of Asia and Europe and around the world.
EISEN: So is the way this ends—
SULLIVAN: Was there an under—
EISEN: Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to follow up. Is the way this ends and the U.S. victorious that they no longer have the strait -- control over the Strait of Hormuz?
WRIGHT: Well, their country's still going to be there, but we need to be in a position where their ability to threaten the Straits of Hormuz is either gone or dramatically reduced from where it's been the last few years, the last several decades.
SULLIVAN: So, if this war were to go on, and let's all hope for a, we all want a speedy outcome, OK? We're seeing a sale from the SPR. Some of that's already been delivered, very quick.
WRIGHT: Yes.
SULLIVAN: OK, but with the previous administration's sale from the SPR, there were some worries that the functionality -- is the SPR broken? Is the mechanism for getting stuff out broken? Could there be another release? We're starting to drain it, by the way. Could there be another release from the SPR if needed?
WRIGHT: Well, of course there could be. I think that's highly unlikely. Two things on that. They did damage the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2022. So we are drawing from only three of the four storage caverns. That is unfortunate. Also, they sold the oil, took that money, put it into the federal budget, and spent money on their Green New Deal to further drive up the price of oil. We're doing something very different. We're not selling those barrels. We're trading those barrels. We're trading a barrel for delivery in the near term for over 1.2 barrels of oil for delivery back to us later next year. So we will end out with a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that has more oil in it at the end of next year than it does today.
SULLIVAN: The American consumer probably doesn't care about the price of oil, but they care about the price of gasoline or maybe heating oil if they're in the New England area. You have got the audience right now, CNBC's huge audience. You can speak to them directly. Gasoline prices back to 2022 levels. They're at $5.50, $6 in parts of California and Washington state and Hawaii. What is your message to the American people right now about what we can still do to bring gasoline prices back down, back down?
WRIGHT: There's things we can do on refinery efficiencies. There's a few more levers we have to pull there that we're looking at quickly. The goal, of course, is to get them down as quickly as possible. But my appeal to the American people is, we have had 47 years of threats from Iran, which have artificially raised energy prices for decades. We're going through a short-term period of disruption right now, but the long-term benefits will be enormous. Think of years ahead and decades ahead for you and your children. You're going to see a much better world. You have got to get through a few weeks of disruption, and we're doing everything we can to mitigate those disruptions.
SULLIVAN: Well, you have got every major oil and gas producer in America, some, by the way, in the world that are in this room today, tomorrow, Wednesday, this conference so critical. I'm sure you have got meetings planned. Feel free to share some of that information, if you would like to. Are you going to ask them if they can or will increase production if called on to do so?
WRIGHT: Oh, absolutely. The American oil and gas industry is extremely patriotic. In fact, we have had people reach out to us. Look, we're a patriotic industry. If there's things we can do to help the United States, we will do them. And they are doing now. This is turnaround season for refineries. People are doing less turnaround, keeping their refineries running at higher capacity than they normally would in the spring. People are looking and bringing creative ideas about how to grow their oil production. Chevron's already grown their oil production in Venezuela. So the industry is rallying to the cause as well.
SULLIVAN: It's like you read my mind, because I was going to wrap it up by asking you about Venezuela. Where are we on Venezuela? I know it's a different type of crude oil. Can you -- diesel fuel, by the way, a major issue, maybe talk about whether or not we're going to limit diesel fuel exports. Feel free to address that as well. Then where do we stand with Venezuela today and in one year from now?
WRIGHT: Yes, so Venezuela, right before, right before the U.S. intervention, was producing a little less than one million barrels a day. And today, Venezuela, is more like 1.2 million barrels a day. So that's 20 percent growth in less than three months. That's pretty tremendous. And I think it shows how much upside there is in Venezuelan oil production. So excited about that. And, of course, when a lot of our refineries were built, Venezuela was the biggest exporter crude in the world. So we're tuned to that Venezuelan Merey heavy oil crude. So, more of that heavy oil into our refineries absolutely helps produce more diesel fuel on the heavy end, but, of course, jet fuel and gasoline as well.
SULLIVAN: Is there a price of diesel where we would limit exports or block exports of diesel?
WRIGHT: We don't want -- you don't want to interrupt the free flow of energy trades. China got right out front and said they're blocking exports. We refine more oil than we can consume. If we blocked exports, we'd have to turn down our own refineries and produce less oil and less refined products. That wouldn't be productive for the United States, certainly wouldn't be productive for the world. We do have some ideas on diesel, that we can bring extra diesel to the marketplace. And I think we will see that happen before too long.
SULLIVAN: Just south of here -- I will wrap it up. Just south of here, ExxonMobil and QatarEnergy have a joint venture called Golden Pass. They're going to be exporting liquefied natural gas. QatarEnergy's, the biggest natural gas, LNG plant in the world, is now offline, and it may be offline or partially offline for years. Does that impact at all Exxon's plans south of here with Golden Pass?
WRIGHT: Oh, that will be on in the next few weeks, if not the next few days. So, no, all of—
SULLIVAN: Next few days?
WRIGHT: Yes. That plant is very close to being operational. These are long, multibillion-dollar, huge projects. But, yes, Exxon and QatarEnergy are great businesses, very savvy in LNG. But, yes, you will see continued growth from U.S. LNG to fill that hole. That's President Trump. President Biden had a pause on LNG export approval. Think of where the world would be today if we had a Harris administration still throttling American oil and gas production. Think where the world would be without that LNG. American LNG production is growing rapidly and will continue to grow rapidly, to the benefit of our country, to the jobs in this country and to the benefit of the world.
SULLIVAN: Like you said, though, I know some of these plans have been put in place for years, and, hopefully, the plans now will lay fruit for the future. For that, we will leave it. U.S. Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright, really appreciate your time, sir.
WRIGHT: Thanks, Brian.
SULLIVAN: Thank you very much.
WRIGHT: Pleasure to be here. The future for energy in America is bright indeed. I can guarantee everyone that.
SULLIVAN: Well, maybe -- the price is down today, but still up from where it was. And there's -- this is the capital, David, of where everything is happening in the world, is right here in Houston. We will be here all day today, all day tomorrow, a lot of big guests -- back to you.
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