Ted Cruz

So I think what President Trump and the administration is trying to do is stay in a sweet spot where oil is low enough that our enemies are weakened, but not so low that we're devastating U.S.

small businesses.

And I think they're doing a pretty good job of trying to balance those two factors.

Yeah, and look, in the last several weeks with everything happening in Iran, everything happening in Venezuela, I've been reaching out to energy leaders, primarily in Texas.

So I've had conversations with the CEO of Chevron and the CEO of Valero, the biggest refiner in America.

And I've had conversations with a number of smaller E&P, exploration and production independents in West Texas.

And and they've expressed optimism, number one, in terms of Venezuela.

Venezuela, as we've talked about, has the highest proven reserves of oil in the world.

No country has more.

But the Venezuelan infrastructure is completely collapsed.

Communism is not capable of producing what they should.

And so Venezuela right now is producing about a million barrels a day, which is a fraction of what their capacity is.

I will say I asked one of the major CEOs, I said, OK, what would the time frame be to take Venezuela from one million barrels a day to three million barrels a day?

And the response was 10 years.

That it doesn't happen overnight.

It would take tens of billions of dollars of investment and perhaps north of $100 billion.

Now, you would recoup that, but the infrastructure has so degraded.

And I said, all right, so 10 years to go from $1 million a day to $3 million a day.

How about just from $1 to $2?

And the answer was five to seven years.