Trish Regan Brings Us the Bad News on the Economy

BUCK: We are joined now, as we have promised, by our friend Trish Regan. She is the host of the Trish Regan Show podcast and editor-in-chief of TrishIntel.com, formerly of Fox Business and Bloomberg. Trish, great to see you.

REGAN: Hey, it’s good to talk to you, Buck.

BUCK: So this is not a good moment for the American economy, particularly on the issue of gas prices. We pointed out before that as of this morning, we were just three cents off the all-time national gas average high from 2008, and it looks like it’s about to get a lot higher. What is this gonna mean for the broader economy? Let’s assume that this conflict continues on, and the Biden administration decides that they’re going to sanction the Russian energy sector directly, which they’re certainly talking about doing. What does that look like for everybody listening across the country?

REGAN: Which, by the way, I mean, my view on this is absolutely they should. It’s (chuckles) kind of obvious that if a country is just massacring people like we’re seeing right now, we shouldn’t be doing business with them and we’ve certainly sanctioned plenty of other countries that haven’t done anything quite close to that, right? So we’re looking at right now in current trading, Buck, around $119 a barrel in oil. That’s where it was trading.

It was trading over the weekend on Sunday night, we saw up to $130. I’m hearing that the administration is fearful it could go to $180. I hear from traders it could go to $180. You know what this is gonna mean. It’s gonna mean very quickly you’re gonna be looking at $9. Instead of $4 for a gallon, you could be looking at $9 or even upwards of that on the gas pumps. I would say it doesn’t have to be that way and there are solutions that we should employ both in terms of drilling here at home and also looking to our neighbors.

I also want to point out, I’m really glad I’m coming on with you guys now because I’m getting some breaking news that I just want to share some developments. You know I’ve covered Venezuela for some time, and have a lot of sources in Venezuela, both in terms of the opposition and within the Maduro government, and I’m hearing from sources close to the government right now that there is an effort, Buck, underway to make sure that at least two, possibly three of the detainees there, the American hostages, are released. So that’s just coming in to me now and I just wanted to share that with you guys. It’s relevant as we talk about oil as well because —

BUCK: Trish, that would be a part of Venezuela trying to get the sanctions lifted, right?

REGAN: Yeah. Yeah. So sanctions have been put on Venezuela. They’ve been there, what, since 2019. There was hope, I think, that we were gonna see a regime change in Venezuela, and if that regime change came about, you could potentially open up those oil fields in the Orinoco region, which I’ve been to. It is the most oil in the world. It dwarfs… It makes… You know, Saudi Arabia’s oil field cannot compare to what’s in the ground in Venezuela.

The trick is it’s super heavy, it’s very tar-like, and you’ve gotta refine the stuff, which our Texas refineries can do. You could get this out of the ground and to Texas in, you know, a few days. So if they were successful in relieving the sanctions, you could U.S. energy companies like Chevron or ConocoPhillips down there pumping all this stuff out and getting the supply chain to the U.S. The problem, of course, has been the sanctions, and so I suspect that there is gonna be some diplomatic activity going on.

The release of — and we’ll see if this comes to fruition. It’s not been confirmed by the U.S. State Department — but again coming to me from sources close to the Maduro government, they are looking to release some of these detainees. This would be obviously a really, really positive development. I think we should all hope for that. But also, you know, realistically, I think with everything that’s going on right now, we should be trying to find solutions to work with people in our hemisphere.

One of the things that has frustrated me from the beginning is that the Russians have been making efforts as well as the Chinese to have a presence in Venezuela and to access that oil — oil that, you know, honestly, like, we ought to be able to realistically access ourselves with a country that theoretically we should have more in common with than they do with the Chinese. So there’s a lot going on.

I think that we don’t have to look at $9 a gallon. We could be smart about this. We don’t have to go to Iran. I mean, of all places! I saw this story that you tweeted out and I actually retweeted it, Buck, about the allegations now that there’s some kind of assassination attempt on John Bolton by Iran. Look, this is a very sort of mixed up world right now, but we ought to be very precise and very thoughtful about how we ensure that our economy doesn’t get just, you know, thrown into a storm, into a total tornado, if you will, because of Russia.

We’ve gotta find other solutions. I mean, the most obvious one is that we should have had Keystone, right? We absolutely should have allowed Keystone to go through. They’ve made mistake after mistake after mistake, and I’m just hopeful that on the policy front, on the international front we can think thoughtfully about this so that everyday Americans don’t pay the price. Because, you know what, Buck? That’s who it’s gonna hurt. Everyday Americans, middle Americans that are trying to, you know, put food on the table and pay their bills. What are they gonna do when it’s $9 a gallon? And think about the effect, the ripple effect on the economy.

CLAY: Trish, this is Clay. I appreciate you coming on with us. We started off last hour talking about where this oil it come from, and the information you’re sharing about Venezuela is fantastic. I said basically there’s five places, right? And I’m curious what you would say in terms of analyzing this, what’s the best scenario, obviously the U.S. we ought to increase the amount that we’re producing.

Saudi Arabia it appears that the United States, the Biden administration has tried to isolate Saudi Arabia over the Washington Post journalist who was killed and tried to say MBS and crew are not great allies. It seems like that’s changing. Venezuela I ranked third. And then I said Iran. Obviously, that’s not where we want, and Russia is five. Are there other places out there that to you we could go to avoid this possibility of $9 a gallon gas? And what would be the best possible outcome? Obviously Ukraine and Russia ending their conflict, but I’m talking about if we have to continue to use the oil and gas in this universe and we’re not gonna have a rapid cessation of hostilities.

REGAN: So, Clay, to me, like, first and most obvious should be the U.S., right? But we only —

CLAY: Yes.

REGAN: — have if you look at the map of all the reserves in the world we actually don’t have as much as a place like, you know, Venezuela or Saudi Arabia. Venezuela, I mean, you’re talking about probably the largest oil reserves in the world. They’ve got like 302 billion, I believe, compared to Saudi Arabia’s 266 billion. U.S. is looking around 35 billion. So, in other words, you got 10 times that amount in Venezuela. I just think that again, in the scheme of things — and, by the way, Clay, if you don’t know — and Buck knows this — I have been very, you know, critical of the Maduro regime —

CLAY: Yes.

REGAN: — and that’s putting it very nicely — over the years. The last couple of years I started to see in part because they didn’t really have a choice. I mean, once you had those sanctions slapped on you, how do you exist? You could have gone super Cuban-like, right, and really tried to rein in your economy that way or you could have gotten more creative about it they brought in a guy from Ecuador, the finance minister there. They came in, they’re trying to implement…

He’s very free market capitalist, some of these free market capitalist ideas in part because they just had to and they had to figure out, like, how can we get our oil to China. Well, why are we letting them send it to China, for goodness sakes? It’s three hours off the coast of Miami! And, you know, there’s a lot more commonality, I think, that they have with us than we have, say, with Iran or they have with China.

So I look at this. Right now, we won’t allow Venezuelan oil in, but we allow Russian oil in. And I just think we’ve gotta kind of take a deep breath. And I say this, you know, without… Again, as someone who would love to see free market capitalism and democracy and all these good things in Venezuela, I think they’ve been trying, and I think instead of, like, just shunning ’em and saying, “You know, hey, forget about it, we’re gonna…

“You go do business with the Chinese, you go do business with Iranians, you go do business with the Russians,” like, why aren’t we actually trying to think about what would make sense for us? And it seems to make sense that we should have a relationship. We can encourage democracy. Maduro has made it very clear, “You can bring in all the people that you want to look after our elections and make sure they’re fair.”

There was a guy, the brother of Chavez, actually, that ran for governor in one of their states, and he didn’t win. And I guess if they really wanted to manipulate the elections (chuckles), they could have made sure that he won. So we can have a presence there in a productive way that is good for them but also good for us, right? I’d rather get my oil from the U.S. and then secondarily from Venezuela than from Iran or Russia or, frankly, even Saudi Arabia.

BUCK: TrishIntel.com, folks, for more from Trish Regan. Also check out the Trish Regan Show podcast. Trish, thanks for the expertise. Great to have you on.

REGAN: Great to be here. Thanks, guys.