Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host Sarah Isger and joining us today is Senator Bill

Cassidy from Louisiana, a neighboring state to Texas, but we'll have food arguments later on in

the conversation, perhaps. We're going to talk energy production. What is actually going on with

the OPEC cuts? What can be done about it? Who's fault it is and maybe who's fault it isn't?

Thank you Senator Cassidy. Thank you so much for joining us.

Hey Sarah, thanks for having me. I want to start just with sort of a big picture argument,

which I've heard, especially from the right, which is that gas prices going up are

complicated in terms of what causes that immediate spike in prices, but that the Biden

administration's overall antagonism toward oil production is what prevents the U.S. from having

more control over oil prices. At the same time, as someone who again comes from a oil-producing

state of Texas, how oil gets produced in this country is pretty complicated too. A lot of what we

get out of the ground here in the United States has to be refined elsewhere. The idea that simply

cutting federal leases, for instance, which the Biden administration certainly has done,

A, it's a pretty long term thing to open up federal leases, but B, it doesn't automatically go

from the ground into your car either. I'm curious if you can give us a lay of the land of your

perspective of what control is there from the federal government over oil prices, and is it fair

to blame the Biden administration, or would this be happening at this point under any administration

two years in? Sarah, you got a lot in that question. Let's tease it apart. First, as regards oil supply,

it's supply and demand. The less oil there is, the less there is to make refined products like

gasoline. The administration clearly has done their best to inhibit the production of oil and

natural gas on federal land. We could give lots of examples, but that doesn't seem to be in dispute.

Now, you can argue that a temporary increase in supply may not make a difference tomorrow at the

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