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Secretary Wright Says the One Big Beautiful Bill Is the First Step of the Energy Agenda, with Permitting and Lease Sales

June 26, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:09:06

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What happened

On Fox Business, with crude trading around $66 a barrel after plunging from a year high of $78 during two weeks of Middle East volatility and a Trump-brokered Israel-Iran ceasefire holding, Maria Bartiromo asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright when President Trump’s energy agenda would play out in real time, noting oil companies were still waiting for executive orders on permitting to be codified. Wright said it will unfold throughout the year and that the first step is the one big beautiful bill, which contains permitting reform and mandated lease sales that the Biden administration stopped, as he stated it.

Wright said another huge element is that more than a trillion dollars of subsidies were slated under then-current law over the next decade, buying, in his words, more expensive electricity and a forced EV purchase; he said the bill is key to ending the EV mandate and getting rid of most — over half a trillion dollars — of taxpayer-paid subsidies while reducing upward pressure on energy prices, and that the administration will also reform the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (FERC and the NRC, as he stated it), to unleash American energy, keep prices down and grow opportunities, according to his remarks.

On President Trump’s Truth Social message to the Energy Department — ‘Drill, baby, drill’ — and his warning to keep oil prices down, Wright said oil prices at their peak in the crisis were lower than their average during the four years of the Biden administration, and that gasoline and diesel are both 10 to 15 percent cheaper than a year earlier and about 30 percent cheaper than three years earlier, as he stated the figures. He said the President’s message tells the world America believes in energy, remains the biggest producer, and holds that more energy and lower prices are better — replacing an administration that, in his characterization, promised to end oil and gas and did everything possible to make production harder, according to his remarks.

Why it matters

The interview is an early marker of how the administration read the oil market’s calm during a Middle East war: Wright’s claim that crisis-peak prices stayed below the prior administration’s average became the template for the energy-dominance argument that followed.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo - June 26, 2025”, 2025-06-26 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-06-26). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.