US Energy Secretary Chris Wright Talks Iran, Oil, Nuclear Power
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Joining us now to discuss the state of energy, not just domestically, but worldwide, the 17th United States Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright. Mr. Secretary, welcome back to the program, sir. Looking forward to an in-depth conversation with you about what you cover every single day. So first of all, just on Iran, so we can deal with that. What is the current stance of the U.S. officially on the use and import of Iranian crude?

Oh, the sanctions are still in place. No change there. I think what President Trump was referring to there is, hey, if we make a large piece and sanctions come off, Iran can flourish. Have you got a decent understanding, though, Mr. Secretary, of just how much Iranian crude is being consumed and imported already as things stand despite the sanctions?

We do. So Iran produces about three and a half million barrels a day, and they've been exporting about one and a half million barrels of oil a day. And the maximum pressure campaign that President Trump did in his last term tamped that down to only 100 or 200,000 barrels a day. They cut off 90% of it. That was a possible strategy here as well, but hadn't been implemented yet. We tried to give negotiations a chance, see if we can do it without maximum pressure.

So is maximum pressure still on the table or is the administration walking away from that? Well, the goal right now, of course, is to get a peace deal, is to get peace into the Middle East and spread the focus on commerce, not conflict. So, no, it's not actively being discussed right now, but the situation is still dynamic there. We want to see peace, prosperity and security as the future of the Middle East.

When it comes to what's going on in Iran as well, in terms of the IAEA, the foreign minister said yesterday that basically they have no plans to having the director general, Rafael Grossi, in Iran. And it doesn't sound like they're willing to give the inspectors the space, time and access they need to look at these nuclear facilities. What is the United States' response to that?

- Yeah, look, this is early on. This is early on. Iran has just had most of its nuclear program entirely devastated by Israel and the United States. They're a little bit humbled. They're a little bit shell-shocked right now. So yeah, I wouldn't put too much weight on those words,

But a final peace deal certainly has to have confidence in a dismantlement of the Iranian nuclear program and that people can have security that won't be resurrected in the future. - You deal with a lot of nuclear at the Energy Department. Before the US strikes, but after the Israeli strikes, Rafael Grossi told us

that the IAEA cannot verify whether 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium in Isfahan was currently where it was. Was it still there? Did the Iranians take it out? Doesn't the IAEA need to go in and verify where this enriched uranium is?

I think that's quite likely part of a future negotiation or a future deal. Mr. Secretary, of course, this is just one part of the conversation in energy right now. I can tell you earlier on this morning, there's a report that you might have seen. It came from Reuters, actually. The administration is readying a package of executive actions aimed at boosting energy supply to power the U.S. expansion of artificial energy. Mr. Secretary, what can you share with us this morning?

Yeah, look, artificial intelligence is an incredibly exciting development that's coming. It is going to revolutionize not just our economy, but our health, drug discovery. But it also plays a huge role in national defense, which is why I've compared it to the Manhattan Project. It's critical. It'll be transformative. And we must lead. We cannot be second place in A.I.

And to do that, we have the scientists, we have the capital. You have to have a huge growth in U.S. electricity production. So we need to get the morass in the way that's really hobbled the American energy system for the last four years. And we've got to unleash American investment and American capitalism. That's going to take building a lot of new power generation.

Mr. Secretary, to build on that idea, what type of energy production are you looking at? I know that New York State was just looking at potentially creating a new nuclear energy plant. Is that one of the paths of travel that you think is going to be pivotal for the United States?

Absolutely. Look, to have a secure power grid and to power AI, you need 99.999% of the time on power. And so that today, our biggest source of reliable power today by far is natural gas. Our second biggest source is nuclear. And our third biggest source right behind that is coal.

So those are the three keys to the future of our electricity grid. Nuclear, we haven't built much for a while, so I was thrilled to see the governor's announcement embracing nuclear in New York. We have the governors of Tennessee and Georgia and Virginia passionate about getting new nuclear built in their states.

So yes, one of our goals in this administration is to launch the American nuclear renaissance. Mr. Secretary, how do you encourage this type of investment at a time where the goal of the president has also been to lower prices? And we've seen this particularly in the energy space, where the president has been very vocal about the desire to see energy prices lower.

And this has led to a number of oil rigs in the shale patch to be taken offline because it isn't profitable for a lot of these companies to be producing as much as they used to. How do you sort of square that circle? Yes. Yeah. Prices are supply and demand. Prices are supply and demand. But what we're doing in the administration is everything possible to lower the cost of produce energy in the United States. Cheaper to produce a barrel of oil or an MCF of natural gas, you know, or a ton of coal or

or a kilowatt hour of electricity from nuclear plants. So that's deregulatory, that's common sense regulation focused on health and safety and the environment, but not the nonsense that just burdens energy producers. Nuclear will be a little bit more expensive at the start, but I think that cost will be borne by hyperscalers. They want to see nuclear re-arrived

and they'll sign higher power purchase agreements to help kickstart nuclear. We need to grow the energy supply and keep costs down. You're right, that's a challenge. You're right to bring that issue up. And that's what I work on seven days a week. Let's get at the regulatory burden. We're lucky to have someone in your seat.

that's actually ran an energy company in this country. As you know, permitting is really difficult across many dimensions. You have to go state by state. Are there things you can do at the executive level to make this a lot easier? Could you describe those kind of things?

There are a number of things, and it is why we created the National Energy Dominance Council. That's really to bring people, leaders from all different agencies that impact the ability to build things in our country together and say what... We talk to producers and say, you know, why aren't you building that? And they'll give us a list of seven things. It'll take us seven years, and we're really worried about this one and that one. So we dive into those issues and say, how can we simplify that?

But I'll highlight a Supreme Court decision from just a few weeks ago on to get more oil out of Utah via train that had been held up for years through suits over NEPA. And the Supreme Court ruled eight to zero. Every Supreme Court justice involved in the case said, yes, we need to put NEPA back in its box.

It's to check, to make sure the environment's being considered. It's not to have years-long, endless delays. Because if you delay something, you make it more uncertain, more expensive, and simply less things get built. Mr. Secretary, appreciate your time, sir, as always, to break down the situation. Hopefully we can engage on this conversation again. Chris Wright there, the Energy Secretary of the United States.

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