CNBC Exclusive: Transcript: U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright Speaks with CNBC’s Brian Sullivan on “Squawk Box” Today

WHEN: Today, Friday, May 15, 2026

WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk Box"

Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on CNBC's "Squawk Box" (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Friday, May 15. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://global-deals.online/video/2026/05/15/energy-secretary-chris-wright-china-will-be-buying-more-u-s-crude-oil-because-of-iran.html%3C/a%3E and https://global-deals.online/video/2026/05/15/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-energy-secretary-chris-wright.html%3C/a%3E.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

BRIAN SULLIVAN:  Hey, Joe and Andrew. Good morning. That's right. We are with Secretary Chris Wright, as you said, the U.S. energy secretary. We are here at Golden Pass, which is ExxonMobil and Qatar Energy's massive new LNG facility in Port Arthur, Texas. Really a first look. I think we are the first media that has been invited in this brand new facility. The first cargo of LNG just left a couple of weeks ago. And I guess we have to thank you because you got us in the door. So, Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.

CHRIS WRIGHT:  I'm thrilled to be here. These are the kind of energy facilities that are fantastic for America and the power of the world.

SULLIVAN:  A couple thousand employees here building out all the trains, the export quantities, not what they are going to be, but they will be soon. I want to ask you. Joe just had some headlines here before we came out of the commercial break, which is basically that China may have agreed to buy U.S. oil. What can you tell us about the China meetings and China's energy purchases from the United States?

WRIGHT:  Yeah, I mean, 20 years ago, we were the largest importer of oil and natural gas in the world. And today, China is the largest importer of oil and natural gas in the world. So there's a natural energy trade there. We've sold them, you know, ethane for poly, for petrochemicals and oil on and off through the years. And I suspect we'll see a growth in their oil imports from the United States.

SULLIVAN:  So you think, you said suspect, but you think they will be a larger buyer. We know they're a huge buyer of U.S. LNG, or at least Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are, China as well. Do you think there'll be a bigger buyer of U.S. crude oil?

WRIGHT:  I do. I do think they will. There's huge interest in Asian buyers from more oil out of Alaska as well. You know, now our oil goes out of the Gulf of Mexico. We'll see more of that going over to China. But in the not too distant future, we're going to see more oil coming out of Alaska that's going to supply our neighbors and friends in Asia as well.

SULLIVAN:  You know, speaking of oil, there's been, I don't want to say, confusion about oil. It's the wrong term. But when you look at some of the inventory data, when you look at Hormuz, when you look at all the flows of oil, a lot of really smart people have said, we're going to be at $150, $175, $200 a barrel for oil. We're higher than we were. We're at 100 and change for oil. Do you know why oil prices have not moved even higher than they are? Can you, can you help shed some light on the state of the oil market right now?

WRIGHT:  Yeah, I think a good chunk of that is President Trump's energy dominance agenda. The world knows he's all in in growing supply. The United States is going to grow our supply of crude oil and refined products. So while we have a temporary interruption and it's a meaningful interruption, but to end the Iran's threat of getting a nuclear weapon, that would be decades of threat to global energy markets, to peace and prosperity in the world. So, President Trump's willing to lean in there. Yes, it's disruptive in the short term, but to end their ability to get a nuclear weapon and have the U.S. continue to grow our production and supply, I think people realize this is not a new world. This is a bump on the road and we'll get through it.

SULLIVAN:  Should, you said short term. Should we, should the world get prepared for maybe a longer supply disruption than some initially suspected? Because give us your view on where we stand in the Strait of Hormuz right now, if you would, Mr. Secretary. And also, what are your estimations about how long things might take to return to normal? And I hate that term, but I think you know what I mean.

WRIGHT:  Yeah. I mean, a lot of that's up to Iran. One way or the other, we will see an end to the Iranian nuclear program, and we will see free flow of traffic through the Straits of Hormuz. That could happen relatively rapidly with an agreement with Iran. Every nation in the world is standing against what Iran is doing, including China, who's a major buyer of Iranian oil and other oil from the Arabian Gulf.

SULLIVAN:  Do you think they'll swap that out for U.S. oil? It's kind of what I asked you at the top of the interview.

WRIGHT:  Yeah, certainly, in the short, certainly in the short run, they're going to do that. They'll continue to buy, and I think growing amounts of U.S. oil. But ultimately, the world needs to get the Persian Gulf open. Iran's attempt to hold the whole world hostage, people know it's temporary. We sent three United States Navy destroyers through it. We escorted some tankers out. That's not the ideal way to do it. But if forced to do it, that's how we'll do it. I think at the end of the day, you're going to see the Iranian regime under such intense economic pressure and global pressure that they'll back off this nonsense. Right now, they're terrorizing the planet.

SULLIVAN:  The UAE announcing this morning, guys, that they're going to basically double their pipeline capacity around the Strait of Hormuz. The UAE is kind of a peninsula that comes out. And this pipeline, they have one that goes across. They want to now build a second one. They just announced that this morning. We've seen Saudi Arabia go full flow to the Red Sea with their port of Yanbu. Do you think that the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Gulf are going to become permanently less important? They're still massively important, but less important than they have been?

WRIGHT:  Oh, absolutely. I mean, Iran, this is a card you can play once, you can play once. We'll see more pipeline capacity through Saudi, through UAE. You know, there's an Iraqi pipeline that goes to Ceyhan in Turkey. We could see a pipeline going to Jordan. There'll be other routes for energy to get out of the Persian Gulf. I prefer to call it the Arabian Gulf.

SULLIVAN:  Yeah.

WRIGHT:  But yeah, I think we will see a decreasing importance from the Strait of Hormuz, but not a decreasing importance of those nations' energy production and energy supply.

SULLIVAN:  Yeah.

WRIGHT:  They're great allies of the United States. They're key energy suppliers to the world. And we need to see prosperity, peace and economic growth returning to that region.

SULLIVAN:  I know my colleague and friend, Joe Kernen, has a question. Joe?

JOE KERNEN:  Yeah. Mr. Secretary, we've talked in the past and, about fossil fuel use and, you know, trying to wean eventually someday off of fossil fuels. Once again, the closure of the strait just drives home the point. It, it's just very difficult and essential to the global economy. And there's no way really to do without it. I was looking at fossil fuel use. That's up. But even as a percentage of global energy usage, after trillions of dollars spent over decades, it's gone down a couple of decimal points in terms of the percentage of energy that is fueled by fossil fuels. This just drives home the point. It's absolutely essential that we drill, baby, drill.

WRIGHT:  Joe, thanks for saying that. People just don't understand that. The world runs on hydrocarbons. It did when I was born. It does today. It will when I die. We just simply don't have replacements for most all of the uses of hydrocarbons. In fact, in the United States, we're at a record high. Seventy-four percent of U.S. energy comes from oil and natural gas, 74 percent. Now England's got a, 75 percent in England, 76 percent in Italy. But yeah, wealthy nations run on oil and gas. Emerging low-income or middle-income nations tend to run on oil and coal, and they're starting to put natural gas into their energy mix as well. But yeah, the $10 trillion on wind, solar and batteries got us to 3 percent of global energy.

KERNEN:  Yeah.

WRIGHT:  And they're just in the electricity sector. So, yeah, we have too much noise around small stuff in the energy system. The prosperity of Americans' jobs and opportunity, they depend on what the country runs on. That's oil and gas. And after oil and gas in importance is coal, because it's an industrial fuel and it can ramp up electricity output when we need it. And then nuclear. Those are the four energy sources that really matter for our economy.

KERNEN:  So, we're stuck. So we're stuck. But you don't seem to be much of a fan, I'm playing devil's advocate here, of carbon capture technology. I think it's mixed. Your comment, your comments on it. You, I think the department has canceled or put under review a lot of these projects, allowing some to go forward. You say it's economically maybe not viable. Do you think there's a, do you think the fossil fuel industry should be spending a lot of money burying carbon dioxide in the ground?

WRIGHT:  The math says no. Even if you look at a worst-case assumption of what's the social cost of carbon, you've got to jump all over and make some unrealistic assumptions to get that over $10 a ton. And it costs hundreds of dollars a ton to capture and inject it underground. So should we turn a lot of dollars into dimes or nickels? You know, I would say no.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN:  Mr. Secretary, different question for you. You know, there's been calls for a windfall tax in some countries on energy companies, especially now. I'm curious if this administration would ever consider such a thing in the context of trying to share this sort of short-term pain with everyday consumers, if you will?

WRIGHT:  No, of course, that would be a way to make short term pain into long term pain. If you increase the tax on something, you get less of it. That's just how economics works. We don't need less oil and gas right now. We need more oil and gas right now. And if you look at the last 20 years, the percent of taxes paid by oil and gas companies as a percent of their profitability, they're quite large taxpayers relative to their profitability. President Trump is bringing common sense back. We don't want to do anything to reduce American oil and gas production. America and the world wants more American oil and gas production.

SULLIVAN:  So kind of on that vein, and to kind of follow up on what Andrew was asking there, can we drive a stake in the heart of a ban on diesel exports? That was kind of floated, and it kind of got killed off.

WRIGHT:  Absolutely.

SULLIVAN:  Diesel exports, are we going to still keep flowing? Or is there a chance still that diesel exports are banned temporarily?

WRIGHT:  No, we're going to keep them flowing. We're going to, look, the United States' economic future depends on, this is a top Trump agenda. We're going to be a growing energy exporter to the world. We can't be a major energy exporter to the world if we decide sometimes to stop exporting our energy. And it wouldn't benefit prices in the United States. We produce, we produce more diesel fuel than we consume. If you stop exporting diesel, we got to turn our refineries down. That would make no sense at all.

SULLIVAN:  Is there, is there a chance? I wrote about this last week in "Power Insider", this new energy vertical that we have and that California has a risk of shortages because they're so reliant on imports that are shipped from Iraq. Another ship from Algeria that came in last week, not a lot of ships behind it. Is there a chance to speak to the Californians that are waking up out there, that there may be a day they go to get gasoline and nothing comes out of the pump?

WRIGHT:  California's just put themselves in a terrible position. United States is a huge net exporter of energy. They get over two-thirds of their oil exported, imported from overseas. And as you said, other countries are banning exports or reducing exports of refined products to California. The Trump administration waived the Jones Act so we could more easily move fuel from right here, from like largest refinery—

SULLIVAN:  Like consider Galveston, or, basically where we are now to Long Beach?

WRIGHT:  Two biggest refineries in the United States are right here in Jefferson County in Texas, and they're sending diesel and jet fuel to California right now as we speak. We're doing everything we can to bring affordable, reliable energy to Americans in all 50 states.

SULLIVAN:  Should they cut their gas tax 71 cents a gallon? Illinois, I think, is at 66 cents to reduce the pain at the pump, maybe trim the gas tax temporarily in California, Illinois and other states.

WRIGHT:  More than just the gas tax in California, over half of the price of gasoline and diesel in California is due to California policies, not due to oil prices, but due to policies specific to a state—

SULLIVAN:  But oil prices do make it, they make it worse.

WRIGHT:  Of course, they make it worse. But California had massively expensive oil and diesel before we decided to disarm Iraq's nuclear program, Iran's nuclear program.

SULLIVAN:  Yeah.

WRIGHT:  They, you've got to bring common sense back to energy policy. This is what President Trump brought to Washington, and we're trying to make that contagious among blue states. You don't need to have expensive energy. It's a choice.

SULLIVAN:  All right. U.S. Energy Secretary Christopher Wright, we are not done with you yet today. In fact, guys, thank you very much for this interview. We're going to drive over the state line into Louisiana. We'll see you later there and sit down again and talk more about LNB and demand around the world. So we'll see you on the other side, literally in Louisiana a little bit later on today. Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.

WRIGHT:  Sounds great. I look forward to it, Brian.

SULLIVAN:  Yeah, thank you very much. So guys, what we're going to do here is we're wrapping up here live. We're going to get in our cars. We're going to drive about an hour east. There's some big new news on LNG. We'll talk more about that. We're here live at Exxon Mobil's Golden Pass facility high in Port Arthur, Jefferson County, Texas. Couple thousand jobs here. Going to get in a car. And we'll see you later on today on "Power Lunch."

WRIGHT:  Close to 10,000 jobs.

SULLIVAN:  Ten thousand.

KERNEN:  Not a—

WRIGHT:  Ten thousand.

SULLIVAN:  Got corrected, real time. I like it.

KERNEN:  Right.

SORKIN:  Thank you, Brian.