Goldman Sachs MD Neil Mehta speaks to Energy Sec. Chris Wright at energy conference

This is an outstanding interview from Neil Mehta with Secretary Chris Wright at the Goldman Sachs Energy Conference.

The main topics discussed in this transcript are:

1. The situation in Venezuela and the U.S. government’s plans to restore oil production and exports from the country. This includes details on the U.S. government’s actions to arrest the Venezuelan leadership, control oil sales, and provide a path to revive the country’s oil industry.

2. The overall state of the U.S. energy industry, with the Secretary discussing the shale revolution, the role of natural gas, challenges in the electricity sector, and his views on nuclear power and renewable energy.

3. The Secretary’s plans to promote the development of domestic rare earth production and processing capabilities for strategic reasons.

4. The Secretary’s efforts to enable the growth of data centers and AI capabilities in the U.S. by leveraging the country’s national labs and energy infrastructure.

5. The challenges facing the U.S. electricity grid, including concerns about reliability, affordability, and the need for more baseload capacity to support growing demand, especially from data centers and other new loads.

Here’s the plan. pic.twitter.com/d6a9bEmlmc

— Secretary Chris Wright (@SecretaryWright) January 7, 2026

Some of the most important quotes from Secretary Chris Wright

1. On Venezuela:
“We want to change the game in Venezuela, fix the country so it’s a productive member of the Western Hemisphere, so it is an ally of the United States and a major supplier of oil to the world.”

2. On the U.S. energy industry:
“Look at what’s happened in the United States. We’ve tripled liquids production in less than two decades in the United States to be by far the world’s largest producer. We’ve more than doubled natural gas production, it’s growing fast. So this is phenomenal and increasingly lower costs and lower prices, it has transformed the world.”

3. On renewable energy and climate change policies:
“We’ve just gotten so far off track. Think of our industry, smart, detailed analyzing, physics, numbers, math. But when it comes to climate change, we just check rationality at the door, forget it, that doesn’t apply over here. It’s only about decarbonizing and claiming we’re in the middle of an energy transition.”

4. On nuclear power:
“Nuclear can provide heat as well as electricity and it can do it all the time the economics are challenged right now It’s expensive, but that’s an addition, but 50 years ago. We got 85% of our energy from hydrocarbons What was the biggest piece of the other 15% would the same thing that powered the world throughout all of human history?”

5. On the electricity grid:
“Electricity is getting more expensive and less reliable. We did a study, if you extrapolate the investment trends that are going on in our country, by 2030, basically soon after the end of this administration, blackouts would a hundred times more common.”

These quotes highlight the Secretary’s candid assessments of the energy landscape, his concerns about certain policy directions, and his vision for the future of the U.S. energy industry. We have made some huge increases under Secretary Chris Wright’s first year, and we would have had massive blackouts had he not been elevated to Secretary.