Us Energy Policy: “Completely Wrongheaded”

Audio By Carbonatix

Published: March 14, 2022 | Date of Source Audio: March 10, 2022

Transcribed and modified for publication from the original audio program

Charlie Kirk pumps industry expert Dan Eberhart on the high price of energy dependence

Charlie Kirk: We're going to explain gas prices, the oil and gas industry from the bottom up. For those of you that know very little about it or nothing at all, that's okay. This is kind of your gas prices, oil-and-natural-gas-industry 101 crash course session, I should say. I know a lot of you guys are emailing us and asking us questions about it.

And so, we have with us right now, someone who is an expert, who is the CEO of Canary, bestselling author, commentator on politics and energy, Dan Eberhart. Dan, welcome to the Charlie Kirk show.

Dan Eberhart: Hey, I'm a big fan. Thanks for having me on the show.

Kirk: You bet. Thank you. Okay, Dan, let's just start at the very basics. Why do gas prices go up? Why do they go down? What are decisions that leaders make that influence those things? And we'll go from there.

Eberhart: Sure. So, well, it's all supply and demand and it's a worldwide market. So what happens in the U.S. and Europe, in Russia, all of that matters. But look, the price of oil, the price you pay at the pump, that's the most visible commodity price that everybody knows. So it definitely affects everybody's life and what we're doing. The price of an Uber is 40% the price of oil. The price of your plane ticket is 40% based on the price of oil. So it impacts everything in everybody's lives, pretty much.

Kirk: So, there's a lot of different influences towards that. So just walk us through some examples of public policy decisions that then impact that price of gas that all of us are paying, whether it be leases, pipelines, or how significant are those things in actually influencing the price of gas?

Eberhart: Sure. So I think they affect the things around the edges. Look, the number one driver is going to be how is the economy doing and do people have a demand for oil and gas. But that aside, the administration, the Trump administration and now the Biden administration, have many, many levers. And they pull on these levers and push on these levers and that's policy, right? And that affects how much supply there is and potentially how much demand there is and moves the price up or down.

“Asking the Saudis, UAE and Venezuela and Iran to increase production is not only foolish, but un-American.”

Kirk: So you recently said that the decision not to import oil from Russia was smart. Asking the Saudis, UAE and Venezuela and Iran to increase production is not only foolish, but un-American. Tell us exactly why and walk us through that.

Eberhart: Sure. So, and forgive me, but this actually makes my blood boil. But look, you know, in the past month or two or three, as the oil prices kind of creeped up and like pre-the Ukraine war, the Biden administration keeps continually reaching out to OPEC to produce more oil and has been completely silent and deaf on the U.S. industry. And so, for those of us in the U.S. industry, this is just maddeningly frustrating. But why is Biden calling OPEC when he could be calling Texas, he could be calling North Dakota, he could be calling Western Pennsylvania? So that’s the number one issue. Number two, I don't think we need to be dependent on – look, we were energy independent under President Trump. There is no need for us to be dependent on OPEC, for us to call Venezuela for help. This is absolutely ridiculous and I think is a completely wrongheaded strategy by the Biden administration.

Kirk: So, walk us through how significant America's energy, minerals and deposits are. Walk us through the Permian Basin and the Marcellus Shale and the Bakken Shale – how much oil and natural gas do we actually have? There's a lot of misinformation about this. Some of the greenies say that we would run out in five years. Go ahead.

Eberhart: Yeah, we're definitely not going to run out in five years. Look, the worldwide market is about a hundred million barrels a day, give or take. In general, you can think about that as 10 million U.S., 10 million Saudi Arabia, 10 million Russia, and then the other oil-producing countries make up the balance. So, in the U.S., we produce about 11.4 million barrels a day right now, to be exact. Before COVID, we were producing about 13 million barrels a day. I think that decrease is based on policy response and different changes in the Biden, the Trump administration has pushed the production  a little bit.

We've got an enormous amount of resources here. We are more or less energy independent. We are right now importing about 20% of what we consume, but we have the ability to change that and produce that here in the U.S. and not need to be relying on OPEC or Russia or anyone else.