Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Venezuela Oil and U.S. Energy Dominance
Sean Hannity reacts to President Trump’s announcement that Venezuela will turn over 30–50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to the U.S., with proceeds controlled to benefit both nations. He’s joined by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, also Chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council, to explain how the plan could impact U.S. refiners, global adversaries, and energy security. Burgum details why Venezuelan crude requires specific blending and logistics, and how U.S. production can replace hostile-state influence in the region. The hour connects energy policy, national security, and economic leverage in a single strategy discussion.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
All right, news roundup information overload hour of the Sean Hannity Show, toll-free on numbers 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, as I was making my way on air last night, President Trump put on Truth Social, I am pleased to announce that the interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over 30 and 50 million barrels of high-quality sanctioned oil to the U.S.
The oil will be sold at its market price, and that money will be controlled by me, yes, the president, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the people of the U.S.
I have asked the Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute the plan immediately.
It will be taken by storage ships and brought directly to unloading docks in the U.S. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Now, Doug Bergham is going to join us in a second.
Now, he will work with energy executives in this country, and this week they've begun those discussions in terms of how to help U.S. energy and refining sectors and help Venezuela begin a safe, proper transition that will reopen the world's largest oil reserves to lawful trade, lawful investment, and frankly, wealth production.
Anyway, he is the Interior Secretary and the Chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council.
He's also a friend of the program.
Secretary, great to have you back.
How are you?
Sean, great to be with you.
And let me just off the top say thank you for all that you do to educate your listeners and your viewers, including on this segment.
Great to have the post from the president.
We've got a team that's on it moving quickly.
And this is part of the top line.
President Trump is restoring prosperity, safety, and security to Venezuela.
And when he does that, he's restoring prosperity, safety, and security to the United States.
Because you can't separate energy policy from national security, and you can't separate energy from prosperity.
And certainly turning Venezuela into an economic partner versus what they were, a playground for every bad actor in the world, from Hamas to Habalah to Iran, Russia, China.
Everybody was down there.
They're out, we're in.
And this is going to be a huge win for Americans, particularly for the refiners that we have that you can really utilize that Venezuelan oil in the refineries here in the U.S.
It's going to lead to lower gas prices for everybody in the U.S.
So this is a win, strategically brilliant on President Trump's part, flawless, breathtaking execution with President Trump as our commander of chief.
And then following up with quick action on the economic side, this is President Trump in action.
It's a beautiful thing to watch, and it's fantastic to be part of it.
It's really going to take America and American oil companies and the ingenuity that we have in our oil industry, in which you are, you know, really familiar with it because, I mean, you have been in this industry now for decades in your life.
What plan is in place to do this and get these, you know, get drilling up to full capacity, refining up to full capacity?
My understanding is the oil in Venezuela is not the cleanest oil.
They refer to it as dirtier oil, so it takes an extra amount of refining.
How long a mission are we talking about here to get it up and running and profitable as quickly as possible?
Well, it'll come in phases, Sean.
And I wouldn't describe it necessarily as their oil is heavy.
It's got high viscosity.
And so what it needs to get it flowing, to get it flowing through pipelines, to get it flowing into a transport ship, is it needs to be diluted.
And diluent is what it's called in the industry.
But that can be a petroleum derivative.
You know who has a whole bunch of that?
The United States has a bunch of that.
It can be the light sweet crude that we have.
It can be a product called NAFTA, which comes out of our refining.
For every five barrels that come out of Venezuela, there needs to be about one barrel of this light stuff shipped in to be able to mix with theirs.
And you know who'd been providing all that?
Russia had been providing all that.
We can knock Russia out of the market.
U.S. production will provide the light ends that we need to help advance this.
And then, of course, you mentioned this exactly, technology.
They have destroyed this country.
It's just shocking, Sean, as you said.
They literally should be looking like one of the richest, newest countries in the world.
Pick a city in Saudi Arabia with gleaming, shining, highest GDPs in the world in those countries.
And then you're talking Venezuela with the same resource and the same opportunity, but corrupt leadership, criminal organizational leadership of the country, and literally people starving.
8 million people have fled that country, all because of the economic systems.
And you're a beacon for preaching against how socialism can destroy countries.
And this is just a case.
This is a case study that everybody in the world should just take a look at and say, here's A, here's B, here's America, here's where we've got capitalism working, and here's where we've got socialism destroying people's lives and their prosperity.
So to get this thing going again, the flow of economic technology and goods and the flow of like our light and liquids, which will help them pump up their capability, and even just things that during this economic sanctions, things like high-end compressor pumps that they could use for gas injection to get more oil coming out of the ground.
They haven't been able to buy the latest technology.
We can now provide that from American companies into the Venezuelan oil patch, and some things could start moving very quickly.
They today produce less than a million barrels of oil today.
That's less than my home state of North Dakota.
And Venezuela is twice the size of Texas.
I mean, they have a lot of reserves because it's a big area.
And they have literally, at their peak, they were almost four times higher than that.
So think of that.
Think of the company that's gone from 4X to less than 1X because of leadership.
That's the case here.
U.S., U.S. companies, U.S. technology that we're talking to, these companies, many are eager to jump in here and help turn this around quickly.
Let's talk about the involvement of American companies from the very beginning, dated back to the 1920s, and how it was American ingenuity, American companies that built out their oil infrastructure.
Are they on board to do what will be necessary to help build it up to maximum capacity?
Well, naturally, we've got some U.S. companies that have been really burned financially by what you've described.
I mean, and particularly under Chavez and Maduro here, where we've had companies as recently as in the last two decades that have lost tens of billions of dollars, essentially confiscated their equipment, their oil leases, all of this gone and taken.
But as you've said, I mean, the corrupt, incompetent leadership has just destroyed an entire industry.
And not only did that, then what they did, the talent they did have still in Venezuela that could have run this stuff, they got rid of it.
It's estimated that over 20,000 people who understood the oil industry left or got fired or run out of Venezuela.
They were replaced by friends of the Maduro regime because they were friends.
So they became jobs programs for cronies who took high salaries but didn't know anything about the oil industry.
So the corruption is just unlimited, Sean, in terms of how they've destroyed an industry.
So some companies are a little risk adverse because they've been in there before, they've lost.
I think what they like, what they're seeing this week, they like that the U.S. is in charge.
They like that President Trump has got a firm hold on this.
We like that we've got a military presence.
They like the fact that the embargo is going to remain in place.
All oil coming in or out of Venezuela is going to be controlled by the U.S.
No more dark fleet.
Some more successes today in chasing down part of these dark fleet, unflagged ships that were around the world.
I mean, Venezuela's oil sales were going to fund terrorism in Iran.
They were going to fund our adversaries around the world.
We're putting a stop to all of that.
And that gives U.S. companies some confidence that we're in a position where we're actually going to deliver and get this industry going to the benefit of the American people and the benefit of Venezuela's people.
All right, quick break.
Right back.
We'll continue more with Doug Berger, Secretary of Interior, Chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council on the other side.
We'll get to your calls coming up as well.
800-941-Sean, our number if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, we continue with the Secretary of Interior, also the Chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council.
Doug Berger is with us.
Let's talk a little bit about a timeframe here.
How long do you think it will be or how long will it take for American companies to really get this thing up and running at a level that can benefit the people of Venezuela?
Well, when we say American companies, again, it's a spectrum.
We've got folks in this industry with great experience in going into some of the roughest, toughest, war-torn areas of the world to develop their energy resources.
The Middle East and war have kind of gone together.
The Middle East and oil have gone together.
So there's companies here in the U.S. that went into Iraq at a time when things were pretty exciting.
Some of those folks have already reached out and said, hey, we've got experience.
We've got team members.
We've got the security.
We're ready to go.
Let's go.
You take the large global multinationals that have got boards of directors and public shareholders.
They're going to be a little more cautious.
But we have a mix of this.
And fortunately, in our U.S., we've got an industry's big with a lot of players.
We're talking to everybody and finding those folks that have an appetite that are willing to jump in and get the risk-adjusted returns they need to be able to deploy capital and people.
But of course, all of this starts back with President Trump.
We couldn't even be having this discussion, Sean, because without having an energy dominance policy that President Trump had acted and enabled to go, we could never have taken out the Iran nuclear facilities back in June.
We couldn't have done that because the price of oil would have gone over $100 and the price of the pump would be up $2, $3.
But when President Trump took that action, nothing happened at home.
We take out Maduro.
The price at the pump doesn't change.
Some oil companies' stocks actually go up.
All of that is because President Trump's operating from a position not just of courageous leadership, but he put in place the underpinning of this energy dominance policy where we can take action against countries that are bad actors, people that do not have the interest of the United States in mind.
We can take those actions to protect our people and protect our country and protect our values.
We can do all that.
And guess what?
The price stays the same at the pump.
So he's got degrees of freedom, President Trump does, because he created an environment where he has those degrees.
And past presidents haven't created the environment to allow this kind of leadership.
So he took all the right steps in the last 12 months leading up to this.
Again, I'd say, you know, A-plus on strategy and execution for the president.
What does this mean for Cuba?
Am I wrong in assuming that all of Cuba's energy resources came from Venezuela?
Yeah, Cuba's got virtually no energy resources of themselves.
And they were relying on, you know, hey, we'll trade, we'll provide security for Maduro.
We saw how that worked out.
You know, these were supposed to be the most fearsome and talented equivalent of the, you know, the, I hate to even call them the Secret Service, but these guys were supposed to be the best of the best, and Maduro didn't even trust his own army to guard him.
And those guys provided no defense for Maduro on that night.
But, you know, trading that kind of capability in, we'll provide security services, but then you sell us your cheap oil that is sanctioned around the world and your discounted oil.
And Cuba was living off that.
So Cuba's economy very dependent on cheap Venezuelan sanctioned oil.
And that's about ready to come to an end because when we're controlling it, all the oil that's coming and going, this is going to create real challenges for the Cuban economy, which is, you know, again, part of one of the larger positive effects that you'll see out of this strategy that President Trump is executing on.
I mean, it's really amazing what we're witnessing and watching.
I mean, we see the potential now of the Iranian regime falling right before our eyes.
I would argue very strongly that President Trump taking out their nuclear facilities jump-started this rebellion now that is all over the country of Iran and protests that are going on, and two cities now have fallen.
I think probably we're looking at Cuba really hanging by a thread and they're on the brink of falling as well.
And freedom may come to Cuba.
And I would imagine they'd be a close ally.
Pretty historic, amazing times we're living in.
Absolutely.
And in Cuba, like Venezuela, well, they lack the energy resources, both proximity and other natural assets they have.
That could be just a thriving, thriving economy under different leadership.
I mean, it could be amazing to see the transformation that could happen quickly.
And when you've got a secure, stable, democratic environment, capital is going to flow pretty quickly.
There's a lot of capital in this world that wants to go into places like this that have the kind of upside potential that Cuba and Venezuela does.
Big time.
I get to see every Fortune 500 company, you know, the minute that Cuba falls, you know, wanting to go in there and rebuild that country.
And that could happen in just a couple of short years.
Doug Berger, we really appreciate you, Interior Secretary, Chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council.
Great work.
Look forward to getting updates as the weeks and months go forward.
And thanks for all you're doing.
We appreciate it.
Right.
And thank you, Sean.
Your work matters a lot, and we're grateful for you, too.
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate all you're doing.
800-941-Sean, our number, if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, back to one of our top stories of the day.
A woman shot by an ICE agent Wednesday.
We had Tom Holman on last night talking about why they are flooding the zone in Minneapolis, especially in light of all of the corruption.
I mean, billions and billions and billions of dollars in fraud stolen from all of you, the American taxpayer.
Anyway, a woman shot by an ICE agent Wednesday morning.
Why?
Trying to run over that agent with her car.
And that person has died.
In a statement, the assistant DHS Secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, a friend of this program, has said, quote, rioters blocked U.S. immigration and customs enforcement with a car, tried to run them over something called an act of domestic terrorism.
That's when an ICE officer opened fire and killed the woman.
No ICE agents, thankfully, were seriously hurt.
And the full DHS statement on the Minneapolis shooting goes into this.
An ICE officer fearing for his life and the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public fired defensive shots.
He used his training, saved his own life and that of his fellow officers.
The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased.
The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries.
This is a direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement officials.
And by the way, there's a 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000 increase in death threats.
And of course, we've seen doxing and we have seen threats against ICE agents now rising.
And then it gets worse.
You have this idiot Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Fry, telling ICE agents to get the F out of Minneapolis.
Will somebody explain to this moron what the supremacy clause of the Constitution means?
In other words, the jurisdiction to enforce federal laws lies with the federal government, not idiots like him.
And it's this type of incendiary rhetoric that results in the hostility towards ICE officials.
Remember, you know, they have an entire application, an app set up to warn people of pending ICE action.
What does that do?
Well, that puts ICE agents' lives in jeopardy.
It eliminates the element of surprise that law enforcement counts on, depends on, to effectively enforce the laws of the land.
They don't like the laws of the land.
They should go and fight to try to change them.
But they are enforcing the laws of the land.
You know, not one of these mayors, not one of these politicians ever raised their voice when we were being lied to as 12 million plus illegals entered our country, including known terrorists and cartel members and gang members and murderers and rapists and other violent criminals.
Not one of them ever, you know, they wouldn't even stand for Lake and Riley's family during a session, a joint session speech by President Trump.
They wouldn't stand for Jocelyn Nungarry's family.
They wouldn't even stand for a young man who had defeated cancer that became a Secret Service agent.
They wouldn't do any of that.
I mean, they care more about what?
The rights of illegals over the safety and security of the American people.
Here's this idiot mayor of Minneapolis.
He should be impeached.
And frankly, he's aiding and abetting in the law breaking.
At some point, we've got to look at if you are a sanctuary city or state, whether or not that is in and of itself aiding and abetting lawbreaking.
Here's this idiot mayor.
There's little I can say, again, that'll make this situation better, but I do have a message for our community, for our city, and I have a message for ICE.
To ICE, get the f out of Minneapolis.
We do not want you here.
Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite.
People are being hurt.
Families are being ripped apart.
Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized.
And now somebody is dead.
It's just the opposite of what he's saying, because what he is doing is inciting people to be hostile towards ICE agents whose only, only fault is enforcing the laws of our country.
We're talking about people, you know, again, they never mention the families, the victims, the Jocelyn Nungaris, the Rachel Morins, the Lake and Rileys, and the hundreds and thousands of people that have been victims of murder and rape and kidnapping and torture and other violent crimes.
They don't mention the drug cartels.
They don't mention the known terrorists in this country.
No, they only want to go against law enforcement because they don't like the laws of the land and they want to go back to the Biden-Harris years of open borders.
What he is doing is putting this rhetoric is putting ICE officers' lives in danger.
And that's why you see this dramatic increase in incidents and threats against ICE agents.
I mean, it's really that simple.
All right, let's get to our busy phones.
Let's go to Minnesota.
Let's say hi to Mary.
You know, how could you elect this idiot mayor, this dope of a governor that you have?
It's unfathomable to me.
Hi, Sean.
Well, first, I would like to apologize for Jacob Small Fry's dirty potty mouse, how an embarrassment, what an embarrassment he is to me as a lifetime Minnesotan.
He is disgusting.
You can call him Small Fry, Sean, or you can call him Fry Baby.
I don't care.
But I just would like to say, he, I believe you just quoted him as saying, or he, maybe I heard it myself, that they are committing terrorism.
I would like to say, what about the terrorism as a Minnesota resident?
I live one mile west of the Minneapolis border.
I would like to say, what about the tax fraud terrorism against Minnesota residents?
Like, I'm not a math genius, Sean, but $8 billion, which most of the small business owners that I talk to.
$8 billion and going higher by the day.
We're just at the tip of the iceberg of finding out how deep this fraud has gone.
Exactly.
I just had a business, small business owner tell me, it's probably at least double that.
So Minnesotans aren't dumb.
And the small people like me and the business owners I talk to, they are so fed up.
And I would like to say, $8 billion in tax fraud in Minnesota, Sean, to me, not a math genius, but that means that every single freaking penny they have taken from me, if I sound mad, I am.
They haven't taken from you, they've stolen from you.
They didn't need any of it, Sean.
If they gave $8 billion away to fraudstrews, they didn't need my tax dollars.
And you know how hard it is to pay your taxes out here?
They've taken thousands from me.
I'm sick of it.
I'm sick of it.
And the small business owners I've talked to out here are sick of it too.
And I just talked to one a couple of minutes ago, and they know about this ICE agent that this woman tried to run over.
And I'm sorry, she put herself in harm's way.
In fact, didn't they designate these people that are attacking ICE agents?
Aren't they considered domestic terrorists, Sean?
I would argue, yes.
Okay.
I would argue this an attack on law enforcement.
I mean, trying to drive your car and kill law enforcement.
Sorry.
They have every right, duty, obligation to defend themselves.
And in this case, that is clear what happened.
Yes.
And I would like to say, Sean, for the small business owners I talk to every day, I would say a month ago, people were still telling me they thought Walls would get re-elected.
You have to realize Minnesotans are very cynical.
And with all the fraud they're finding coming out in the open, you can see why.
But I would say then two weeks ago or so when Nick Shirley exposed all these daycares, I started hearing from Minnesota business owners, oh, my brother-in-law who's far left says he voted for Wallace before, but now he's not going to vote for him with all this fraud.
And now what I'm hearing is obviously he's dropped out of the race.
But I would like to say Minnesotans, I think, are cautiously hopeful, at least the business owners that I talk to are cautiously hopeful.
They're still pretty cynical because Minnesota.
But I think we have a chance.
This is my opinion.
I think we have a chance.
I think the Democrats are going down in Minnesota, Sean.
I don't.
Let me tell you, you have a chance at a U.S. Senate seat this year and a chance at a new governor this year.
And I'll tell you this.
If the people of Minnesota don't wake up and don't get rid of people like Ellison and Walls and Fry Baby and the rest of them, then your state is gone.
You might as well pack your bags, come to Florida, go to Texas, go to Tennessee, go to the Carolinas because there's no hope for your state.
It's sort of like, you know, I talked about this with O'Reilly earlier today.
I mean, you've got this tenant overseer, if you can believe it, a New York tenant advocate who's literally calling for the seizure of private property, you know, making pronouncements that it's important that white people feel defeated and who said, I want to impoverish the white middle class.
I mean, you can't help a city that votes for something like that.
You just can't.
Well, I think we can.
I think we have a chance out here.
Because, Sean, guess what?
You can't do anything about what's going wrong till you know.
And what's happening right now, Sean, it's all coming out in the open.
It's all the dirt is coming out.
And you know what?
No matter which side of the political spectrum you're on in Minnesota, and I will say most of the small business owners are common sense conservatives, but no matter which side you're on, when you hear $8 billion in fraud, Sean, this is your chance.
Mary in Minnesota, tell everybody you know, seize the moment.
Get rid of them all.
Vote them out.
I've got to move on.
I'm praying for the people of Minnesota that they wise up.
Shirley in my free state of Florida.
Hey, Shirley, how are you?
Hi, how are you?
I'm good.
Glad you called.
Oh, me too.
Okay, my question is, what is the deal with the seizing of the proper property?
I just don't understand the legalities of that.
I listen to this stuff, and I've been working for 35 years.
I do hair, and it's an accomplishment.
This is an American dream.
It makes you feel so good when you have something that is truly yours.
And what I think about, I think about my parents' age.
My parents are gone, but people that age and that are older.
This is frightening.
And they can't say things that are impossible to do, but people believe it.
So I'm wondering, what are the legalities of this idiocy?
They don't have the right to do it, number one.
What have I been saying?
And you're going to hear this a lot from me this year.
And for all of you that are going to accuse me of being repetitive, I plead guilty.
This is the single most important midterm election in our lifetime because the radicals have taken over the Democratic Party.
The Tim Walz, the Keith Ellisons, the Jacob Fry's, the Mamdanis, the AOCs, the squad, Grandpa Bernie, Pocahontas.
And if you don't go out and vote this coming November and vote in droves, make it the most important election in your lifetime, these people will then get back in power.
They will want to destroy Donald Trump, everybody around him, and all progress will stop.
I want everyone to pledge to themselves today that they're going to vote in November.
It's not, that's all I need.
I'm not asking for anything else is that everybody be determined to show up in massive numbers all across the country.
And we have to overcome historical trends to win this midterm.
We can do it.
Don't let anybody tell you we can't.
I've got a role.
I do appreciate your call.
Thanks for listening.
Thanks for being out there.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
A great Hannity tonight, nine Eastern on the Fox News channel, the radicalized rhetoric, dangerous rhetoric of the left in light of what has happened in Minnesota today.
We will chronicle all of it.
These sanctuary city mayors and state mayors and state governors, they are causing havoc and danger.
Anyway, Todd Lyons, we have a list of reporters, Jonathan Turley on the legal aspect.
We have citizen journalist Nick Shirley tonight.
Also, Ron DeSantis, James Comer, Riley Gaines, Clay Travis, nine Eastern, set you DVR, Hannity on Fox.