Secretary Wright Joins the Glenn Beck Program—July 30, 2026

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, how are you sir? Hey, I'm doing well Glenn. How are you? Great to be here. I'm great. I'm great. Um, thank you so much for coming on Um, I gotta i've got so many things. I want to talk to you about in so little time. So, um, Uh, let me just start, you know when I said on the air a couple of days ago Donald trump is the fastest builder of anything. I watched him build things in new york city that I mean I couldn't believe how fast he could get things done and quality Um, we built the empire state building in you know in under a year 11 months Is there a way and would it make a difference on price to build more? Oil refineries, especially for light sweet crude and could we get it done? And push it through quickly enough to make a difference Well, we do have a new light sweet crude crude refinery plan to be built in south texas It'll be the first new refinery built in the u.s in over 50 years But it does take a few years to build so it won't impact, you know gasoline or diesel prices in the near term But it's a hugely positive message to the market that a new refinery is coming Tuned exactly for the kind of crude we're producing in south texas in the permian basin of west texas. It'll be a great new addition Well, here's what people don't understand and and I know you've explained it before Um, but i'm just looking for solutions to this because people don't understand we have all of this Oil and it's light sweet crude Most of the stuff is dirty that we you know that we can't that our refineries only report The heavy crude will process it Um, we're in a situation where you know, america may need fuel More than just for cheap purposes with our strategic oil reserve being as low as it is Are we doing absolutely everything we can to make sure that america is not behind the eight ball in case we're at war? We are and glenn relative to everyone else. We're in the best shape of any country in the world We are a meaningful net exporter of oil a meaningful net exporter of diesel and jet fuel But we actually import gasoline Because the united states consumes a greater percent of our oil in the form of gasoline than the rest of the world So we do have trade with the world But we are a meaningful net exporter our refineries are running at record high output right now Um, yeah, i'm frustrated as is the president the gasoline prices are higher than we'd like But they're still a dollar a gallon cheaper than they were four years ago during the biden administration When there wasn't an interruption of energy flows around the world So it may not feel great, but we're doing we're doing well Given the circumstances and i'm proud of our president standing up to iran And ending just an emerging threat to the world with iran's race to nuclear weapons One last question on oil you told me back in may that our strategic oil reserve was damaged um because of what biden did We need to spend over 100 million dollars to repair the damage and it's going to take us Flat four five six years to fill the strategic oil reserve President has told me I think it's 2032 by the time it gets completely full um How bad? Is this I mean, you know, we're hearing things on munitions and we're hearing things on the strategic strategic oil reserve And I don't know how much of it is an information war and how much is true How are we doing with our oil reserve? So, you know, we're thank god we have it and we are releasing oil which is helping our refiners Uh meaningfully and so I you know, it's not it's not terrible The biden administration was wildly irresponsible in selling 200 million barrels of oil for an election To lower gasoline prices and to fund their green new scam programs. So that was terrible So we came into this with much less oil in the spr than we would have liked But as I think I told you before, you know, we're trading these barrels. We're not selling them So we will end after this conflict at the end of this administration We'll have an extra 40 million barrels in the spr at no cost to american taxpayers And american oil production continues to grow our natural gas production is growing So sure i'd love to have i'd love to have started with a full spr I'd love to not be spending the money now to repair the damage from the biden administration But this is america and this is the trump administration. We're fixing the spr Um, we are we're doing swaps that will start filling the reserve up at a meaningful pace next year And we'll get through the energy part of this crisis I think reasonably well and we'll be stronger more robust and more focused on the other side So let me switch to some something else My audience is so concerned about and that is the price of their electricity going up because of the data centers And i've talked to people who are for the data centers and they said, you know with water You know, it's it's only about the amount of water of a golf course your local golf course that they're using when it comes to energy I think it's something each town can bargain, uh with to make sure that You know that that that data center is paying for any of the upgrade in infrastructure or anything else Can you tell me what the truth is on the power situation with data centers? You bet so look on the on the power with data centers What we're seeing here is mostly a democrat and a left-wing sales pitch their green energy policies These mandates they put at the state level and when biden was president at the federal level drove energy prices up a lot And people are mad They don't want to own that problem. So they're pointing the finger at the obvious thing. No, it wasn't us It wasn't our stupid policies It's data centers that are driving up electricity prices and honestly glenn. It's just false The states that have had the fastest growth in demand for electricity and a good chunk of that comes from data Centers, they have the best performance on energy prices All of them have energy prices that have risen less than the price of inflation And some of them have had real declines. I mean nominal declines in the price of electricity So data centers are the best tool we have to help first stop the rise of electricity prices in your region And ultimately to drive them down You know new york state they drove electricity prices up with stupid policies And so now they've said we're not going to have any data centers that'll actually contribute to prices rising even faster in new york Um, but no look data centers This is america. Not everybody has to have a data center in your neighborhood. So I don't want to alarm people There's plenty of places to build data centers, but the communities that do negotiate deals I believe will get enormous benefits. They'll stop the rise of energy prices They'll generate enormous tax revenues for their police for their schools for their parks Heck we got a area in georgia that just eliminated property taxes because the taxes from the data center Will cover all of the residents property taxes. Wow There are Huge wins available here My comment to communities a lot is you don't have to have a data center But engage in the dialogue because if you push it away Those benefits are going to go to someone else and you're going to miss an opportunity I I will tell you I don't mind if if towns don't want to have a data center that that's they're right It has to be open and transparent and there has to be somebody like if I didn't want a data center I would be sending in the toughest negotiator that I could get and i'd ask for the moon and the stars You know what? Then you're going to reduce our electricity costs per customer, uh by 20 percent And here's how you're going to do it or you're going to upgrade this or you're going to pay for our police Are you going to whatever it is? I want no more, uh tax on uh, you know on our housing or our property taxes Negotiate because sometimes you're going to get that And that's so much better than just saying no, I don't want it Negotiate for things that you would go. You know what? It might be worth it If we got that they'll never give it to us ask Ask they just might Glenn you're so right. This is an opportunity for a negotiation. Not a threat. It's an opportunity. Not a yes Yes um Can I ask you? Are we doing anything on hydrogen? I I live in a I live in a at a ranch up in the mountains and uh, I have spent Seven figures on electricity. I need about 40 kilowatts to run this whole place with the broadcasts and everything else um, and I am Constantly fighting for the energy. It's this green thing is just not ready for prime time I don't have electric service up here and I don't want it up here because then more people move up here, but uh, You know, I I want to be green and I want to be off the grid, but it's not ready Is there anything like hydrogen or anything on the horizon soon that will actually be stable for people? You know I mean hydrogen is basically the the left's attempt to have a better battery a longer lived battery So yes, you can store a lot of energy in hydrogen, but it's very expensive It's expensive to store hydrogen About half of the energy is lost in making hydrogen and then turning hydrogen back into electricity at least half So somewhere between half. So what do we have that? Do we do we have anything that's on the horizon? That you guys are are trying to push through um that Would would help people Well next generation geothermal is coming We got a 500 megawatt plant under construction in utah mining the heat underneath your feet President trump set aggressive agendas in may of last year to say we're going to get three next generation nuclear reactors critical By july 4 we had four reactors critical by july 4 and another one coming soon So we've got a next generation. What does that mean when you say nuclear reactors critical? That's probably the wrong words to you. What what does that mean that nuclear four of them critical self-sustaining chain reaction So running their full nuclear systems They don't have the other side where you take that heat and convert it into electricity yet But they have all the critical nuclear parts showing that these next generation reactors. They're small They're modular as we build them in volume. The costs are going to come down. This is extremely exciting We'll be getting electricity in remote areas From nuclear reactors next by the end of next year and a meaningful amount of it by 2028 We've got all sort of gas turbines under construction We've got new pipeline to bring low-cost natural gas to communities If you had you know gas recip engines at a natural gas line You could have an enormous amount of low-cost electricity on demand whenever you wanted it No, I don't know the infrastructure where you are If you don't have electric lines, i'm sure you don't have gas pipelines. I don't have gas lines, but I tank it in That's our that's our that's our back right? You bring propane Yeah, yeah, you're you're i'm sure yeah, yeah propane Yeah, so there is cool stuff coming in energy technology, but the stuff that was you know politically favored Um, you know hydrogen again. I'm look i'm a tech nerd So if the math works i'm all for it, but the math on hydrogen looks pretty bad. I don't I don't see that Are we taking the restrictions off I heard that we're taking restrictions off of uh fuel standards for cars, is that true? Yeah Shouldn't that that's it's that's epa but there's there's a lot of regulations like that at doe as well We just want consumers to choose if you want to buy an expensive design device that consumes less energy God bless you go for it But if you can't afford to buy a super fancy Next generation hot water heater or dryer. You shouldn't be forced to buy a super expensive one. We're gonna let people choose This is america How much damage have you and I say this in a good way? How much damage have you done to the big state that cannot be reversed quickly? I I hope by the time we're gone a lot, you know We are we're doing a thing called a process rule. That's basically saying you can't just make up regulations and impose them on people Without proving that you're not harming individuals and you're delivering net benefits And most of the regulations that are passed will not pass that test The endangerment finding that epa is challenged that has been the the justification for all the deep state Rules that just get into everyone's lives Um, we think that rule will stand leak will withstand legal scrutiny and it'll be very hard to bring that back So we are working every day to just shrink that this incredible overreaching power of our government It just impoverishes americans and squelches opportunity. That's not president trump's agenda It's great to have you on chris. Thank you so much. God bless. Keep up the good work in washington. You bet You bet thank you, um, these are um energy secretary uh, chris, right