U.S. oil production driven by money, 'not federal policy', says Fmr. Sen Heidi Heitkamp

Which guy is actually better for big oil and big oil investors? Joining us now is Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright and former North Dakota Senator, University of Chicago Institute of Politics Director and CNBC contributor Heidi Heitkamp from the oil rich state of North Dakota. Senator, I’ll start with you. I mean, listen it. President Biden wanted to do away with fossil fuels. It was. He said it all the time before getting elected. Now we got record production, near record profits. Stocks are at or near records. I mean, did you have that on your 2024 bingo card? Well, I actually did, because we can’t survive in this country without oil. Oil drives our economy and I think the Biden administration is afraid to talk about it because it’s against the narrative of the trajectory of where he wants to have the economy. But I will tell you what’s good for the oil industry. What’s good for the oil industry is consistency in policy so that they can tell their investors, Look, this is long term policy. You make your investment today, in over 5-10 years, it’ll pay off. And neither side is offering that opportunity. But I’m very concerned asking people for a billion dollars and then turning around. And Politico announced that there the oil industry is preparing a list of executive orders for the president to sign day one. And when you look at that, is that quid pro quo, Is that pay to play? Where does this thing end? And I think Americans are entitled to know what the policy is going to be and and understand that they’ll have a debate about it, not just fine and and that’s fair. Senators sort of with these meetings and and if the former president does get back in the office and does that, people are going to go lose their minds. But Chris Wright, I would say this that when the current President Biden came into office, he kind of undid all the stuff that Trump did with not just with energy but with immigration and a lot of different things. Some people on the other side have lost their minds right to Senator Heitkapp’s point. How important is it for you to have some level of consistency and not some dramatic climate, energy, environmental rule changes every four years. Of course Brian. Uncertainty chills investment and by the way great to be here with you and the senator from the great state of North Dakota. Look my my simple view is Biden is good for our industry in the short run because his policies to get in the way make it more expensive and riskier to pre soil and gas have slowed the growth of American production. We’re still growing, but it slowed the growth incrementally. That means higher prices, higher profits for my company and our industry. Absolutely. Biden is a boost in the short run, but in the long run, his pathway is the pathway of Europe, which is ultimately to shrink American production offshore to other countries. Nothing he’s doing is reducing demand, but ultimately it would lead to higher prices and more production outside of the United States. So in the long run, Biden would be bad for our industry. Well, I could, Chris. I’ll come back to you because I guarantee you there are people watching that support the former president that will say, and they’re like throwing tomatoes at the TV right now because they’re saying, Dang it, sully, we’re at record production because of things that we started five years ago, like because it takes time to ramp up. Probably some of that is accurate. It’s not like you move overnight, but at the same time, we’re at 13.1 or 2 million barrels a day, Chris, aren’t we? We’ve never produced more oil than any country in the history of time. That is correct. But you’re right, Brian, that’s in spite of the Biden policies, not because of them. Of course. It would have been higher without the Biden restrictions. It’s record natural gas production, retro net, record natural gas liquids. That’s technology and that’s production mostly on private lands. Well, Senator, I can copy it. Yeah. I mean, I just want to say this is about supply, demand. Everybody wants to say it’s about the government. Guess what? It’s about how much oil we’re going to consume and who is the lowest cost producer. And one thing we found out is as the Saudis drove oil prices down, the the shale industry struggled very hard to make ends meet. And so a lot of this is about competition, a lot of this is about how do we basically continue a a right sized trajectory. But I do, I do not agree that a lot of federal policy has driven this investment. It’s about whether you can make money. Well, it’s weird, Senator. Listen, Senator Heitkamp, you’re a Democrat, but you’re from North Dakota, so you’re not. You’re not afraid to stand up in front of your people if you’re rerunning again. And you would say, you know, we’re at record production and and go North Dakota, go you, you can say that in North Dakota. I don’t think the president is going to be putting out TV ads highlighting the record oil production in America. So it’s like a hard story for him to tell because he’s trapped by what he said and what’s actually happening. Yeah, Brian, can I just make one point? The single most important positive initiative for the oil industry was opening up oil exports. Guess who signed that bill? It was Barack Obama. So let’s not just get into this, you know, Democrat, Republican thing. People who understand that we need to have affordable, reliable energy in this country, need to have a policy that’s consistent over the long run that’s going to drive investment. Let’s put putting so much political emphasis on what’s happening.