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Wright on Fox News Sunday: The Seized Venezuelan Tanker, Sanctions Enforcement and Electricity Prices

December 14, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:05:15

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What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright joined Fox News Sunday on December 14, 2025, according to the Department of Energy’s recording. Asked what would happen to the oil aboard a seized tanker after President Trump said the United States would keep it, Wright said he did not know the exact cargo but that a supermax tanker carries at maximum 2 million barrels, against world consumption of over 100 million barrels a day. He said the ship was flying a false flag, carrying sanctioned Venezuelan oil, and had previously carried oil from Iran, and that seizing it was enforcing the law, which he said is necessary for sanctions to bite.

Wright agreed with the host’s framing that the oil is part of the operation against drugs, saying Venezuela’s government funds itself two ways — running drugs and illegally selling oil — and that oil revenue helps fund what he called the drug cartel that is the Venezuelan government. He cited 100,000 U.S. deaths a year from fentanyl and other drugs as the crisis the President is focused on, as he stated the figure.

On affordability, Wright said that on inflation-adjusted measures gasoline prices are the lowest they have been in 20 years except for a blip during Covid, crediting the administration’s pro-energy, energy-addition policies for immediate effects in gasoline, diesel and other fuels. On electricity, he said the sector is a big, complicated machine that the Biden administration spent four years degrading by shutting coal and gas plants and, in Washington state, moving to dismantle four hydroelectric dams. He said the administration has stopped the digging and stopped coal plant closures, predicted Americans would see a stop in the rise of electricity prices very soon, and said declines would follow later in the term if energy-addition policies continue. He also said Russia’s slowing diesel exports, after Ukraine’s strikes and EU sanctions, have pushed diesel prices up globally.

Why it matters

The tanker seizure shows sanctions enforcement becoming physical interdiction, and Wright’s linkage of Venezuelan oil revenue to the drug trade is the administration’s stated logic connecting its energy and narcotics campaigns.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins Fox News Sunday - December 14, 2025”, 2025-12-14 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-12-14). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.