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Wright on The Bob Clark Podcast: 'Build, Baby, Build' — Infrastructure Is the Bottleneck in New Mexico

February 24, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:07:48

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright joined The Bob Clark Podcast while in New Mexico to visit Los Alamos National Labs that day and Sandia National Labs the next, saying it was the honor of a lifetime to help bring common sense back to Washington, lower energy prices for Americans, strengthen the U.S. position around the world, and hopefully end some conflicts and wars, according to Wright.

On why the job attracted him, and on New Mexico — second in the nation in oil and gas production behind Texas — Wright said that beyond drill, baby, drill, the important thing is build, baby, build, according to the interview. He said there are great resources in New Mexico’s Four Corners area, but the inability to build infrastructure and proceed with development has stifled it for a decade, according to Wright.

Wright said the Permian Basin is so large and has so much momentum that the constraint shows differently there, but that drilling on federal lands in New Mexico is harder than on private land, and that under the Biden administration more and more federal land was taken off the table even for the possibility of oil and gas drilling, according to Wright.

Why it matters

The February 2025 podcast appearance is Wright’s infrastructure thesis in short form: resources are not the constraint, he argued — buildable infrastructure and federal-land access are.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright on The Bob Clark Podcast - February 24, 2025”, 2025-02-24 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-02-24). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.