00:00Well, let's see, let me find a topic you may not be as passionate about.
00:03How about Venezuela?
00:07You know, from your point of view, being in the private sector, right,
00:12I mean, you produce energy, and then you see what happens, like, with Venezuela,
00:17a source of oil, natural gas.
00:19How do you assess, you know, what's happening there,
00:22not only just Venezuela, but other countries that also have, you know, supplies?
00:26You as a U.S. company, how do you factor that into supply and production, you know,
00:34when you see these kinds of additional sources potentially coming into the markets?
00:39Yeah, of course, new Venezuelan production, and I believe we will see that,
00:43growing Venezuelan production drives prices down.
00:47And I've always been that weird guy who spent most of my, I've been in many sectors of energy,
00:52but mostly in the oil and gas industry, and I've been a little bit lonely
00:56in cheering lower oil prices and lower natural gas prices.
01:01The shale revolution, just by the straight math,
01:03has saved U.S. consumers over a trillion dollars every year.
01:06It's pushed down oil prices and it's pushed down gas prices.
01:08Well, why do I like low prices?
01:10Because 100% of Americans consume oil and natural gas every day of their life,
01:16and 1% of Americans produce oil and gas.
01:20So high prices are a win for 1%.
01:23They're overlapping, of course, but it's a loss.
01:26It's a net loss for the other 99%.
01:29So, and that's what business is supposed to be about, right?
01:31Competitive innovation to drive down costs, to deliver products to consumers
01:35at ever higher quality and ever lower cost.
01:39So, yes, I have been a lifelong celebrator of lower oil prices,
01:43lower natural gas prices, lower coal prices,
01:44lower nuclear power plant costs, lower everything.
01:48If you can make energy cheaper, you make people's lives better.
01:51So Venezuela, of course, the policy wasn't about that,
01:54but it is a great and non-trivial secondary impact
02:00of what's going on in Venezuela.
02:02I'm sure everybody knows, like Venezuela for 26, now 27 years,
02:07have been on a downward decline,
02:09about a 70% decline in the real GDP.
02:14Like, I think only three other nations in history
02:17have exceeded that degree of plunge in the real GDP of a country.
02:24Just a horrible thing for the 30 million Venezuelans.
02:29And, of course, it gets people into criminality and drugs.
02:32And, you know, a failed state has impacts in its neighborhood.
02:36It has impacts on the United States.
02:37And we've tried all sorts of policies to try to push better behavior in Venezuela
02:43over that 20-plus year period, and nothing has worked.
02:47And, again, President Trump, if nothing else, he's iconoclastic.
02:51While nothing else has worked, we're going to do something different.
02:54And, you know, Biden administration had a $25 million bounty on the head of Maduro
03:00and his wife, who were basically narco-gangsters.
03:03And an incredible, incredible military operation,
03:08without a single loss of American life, you know, took them into custody.
03:13We arrested two criminals that were highly wanted in our country.
03:17And the other impact, side impact, is going to be just, this is tricky.
03:22There's challenges along the way.
03:24But it's going to likely be a massive improvement in the quality of life for Venezuelans.
03:30We're going to see a return of some of the Venezuelan diaspora.
03:32We're going to see huge benefits in the United States,
03:34because energy prices are going to be lower.
03:37Criminality is going to be lower.
03:38The importing of guns, the kidnapping of Americans,
03:41and human trafficking are going to go down.
03:43But, yes, and then how are we, and we have significant power right now
03:49or influence over Venezuela,
03:51not because we have any American boots or guns on the ground,
03:54but because we're going to, we're controlling today,
03:57we are controlling the sale of all of their, all of their oil and natural gas.
04:03And then we are taking those funds and placing them in American-controlled counts
04:07and flowing them back to Venezuela.
04:10Venezuela, we're getting about a 30% higher realized price
04:14when we sell the same barrel of oil than they sell the same barrel of oil three weeks ago.
04:20And a quarter or a third of it was leaked out in corruption
04:24and was never going back to the government.
04:27It was going out to criminal gangs in Cuba and elsewhere around.
04:32And internal corruption in their own oil companies.
04:37So it's not the desired end state,
04:40but today we have an ability to drive change that could transform a country,
04:45transform our relations with that country and conditions of life here
04:48with no more bullets fired.
04:50I am, it's a challenge, but I'm excited where we are.
04:53This is, this is a creative one of a, first of its kind.
04:57May not be the last of its kind, but first of the kind attempt to project American power
05:02for the betterment of Americans and the betterment of our hemisphere.
05:08Yeah, I mean, I'm old enough to remember,
05:10and I'm from the Gulf of America region,
05:12where we were building refineries, engineering refineries,
05:17to take the heavy sour from Venezuela.
05:21You know, we, this was before the shale revolution
05:23and all the breakthroughs, you know, that you and your company did.
05:28But by design, we had great relations back then with Venezuela.
05:32A prior panel talked about this.
05:35It only made too much sense.
05:36And you can go back for 100 years before the Chavez and Maduro regimes.
05:42Great relationship.
05:43Our refined, willingly.
05:45I mean, it was designed to take that specific crude.
05:48Project next four or five years in Venezuela, you know, if political stability there.
05:55What would be the best outcome in Venezuela?
06:00So, real quick history.
06:01When I was born, Venezuela was the third largest producer of oil in the world.
06:07U.S. was number one.
06:08Soviet Union was number two.
06:10Venezuela was number three in the world.
06:13Venezuela was top ten in per capita income.
06:17You know, peaceful, you know, thriving democracy.
06:20Of course, a lot of money flowing and fast, corruption issues.
06:23Not perfect, but a successful nation that was one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America,
06:29a great American ally, and, of course, top-down control, dictatorship, or whatever, it's fallen down.
06:35So, the goal is to get it, go back where it was.
06:38So, in the short term, we saw in Iraq, if you disempower the debathification,
06:43everybody that was in power, everybody that has the guns,
06:46and everybody that knows how to run the levers of the civil service and the government,
06:50that doesn't go well.
06:52So, we are dealing with the people with the guns today.
06:56We have, I think, the better faction of the people that have the guns in Venezuela,
07:01but they are, this is not a democratically elected representative government of the Venezuelan people.
07:06We want to keep the nation together.
07:09We want to see the economic conditions improve as quickly as possible for the people that live in Venezuela.
07:15We want to see the return of rule of law and order.
07:19We're going to see, hopefully, significant growth in the economy,
07:23make the conditions so American businesses and others will go back into the country and invest,
07:29and, ultimately, on a pathway to a representative government that's chosen and represents the will of the Venezuelan people
07:36that is, again, a peaceful, you know, market-based, U.S. ally, star member of our hemisphere.
07:44That's the vision.
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