Hear from Vicki Hollub and Chris Wright at Davos 2026 as they explore global energy solutions, demand realities, and sustainability trade‑offs.
In their Davos 2026 dialogue, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub argued that energy abundance—not enforced scarcity—should anchor economic resilience and geopolitics. Wright framed the Trump administration’s approach as “more energy is better than less energy,” linking affordable supply to “prosperity at home and peace abroad.” He criticized European decarbonization policies for driving higher prices, lower industrial output, and greater vulnerability, warning that “you can’t be economically strong or militarily strong if you’re not energy strong.” He also challenged prevailing climate narratives, contrasting roughly 6,000–10,000 annual deaths from extreme weather today with about 500,000 a century ago, while noting indoor air pollution from solid fuels kills 2–3 million people yearly.
Hollub contended oil will remain essential for “the next hundred years,” but emissions must be managed. She highlighted Occidental’s CO2-enhanced oil recovery, claiming injected CO2 can make incremental production “net zero carbon…or very close to it,” and argued direct air capture could supply CO2 at scale. She projected US production may plateau by 2027–2030, making recovery innovation critical, citing “3.5 trillion barrels of oil in place” and potential for 50–70 billion incremental barrels. Both urged regulators, banks, and tech firms to reengage with “energy reality,” emphasizing that restricting capital raises costs and undermines reindustrialization and security.
Chris. So I understand this is your first Davos.
Thrilled to be here.
So since you're here and you've I know you've had a lot of meetings and you've had a chance to to see everything. And and people have wanted to hear from you. And so could you just tell us what are your general overview, overall views of what's happening in the energy industry and how you are thinking about things from a Doe perspective?
You bet. I mean, President Trump elected on an agenda of more energy. More energy is better than less energy, not just for the United States, but to give the United States energy to export abroad. So he's summary policy is prosperity at home and peace abroad. And I've got to say up front, I am a lifelong Europhile. I mean the culture. We are children of Europe, the culture from the from the Renaissance, the launch of the scientific revolution, the birthplace of property rights, capitalism, all of the institutions that represent the United States and Western society came from here. So my critical critique of European energy policy comes from a place of love. And the president shares these views. But if you look at the US and the and the European Union or nations of the European Union, energy 15, 20 years ago were similar, a little more expensive in Europe, but not wildly different. And if you start from the year 2010, we just had meaningfully diverging paths. And in Europe it was in the name of climate change. We're going to combat climate change and therefore transform our energy system. But if you look from that year, 2010 forward, the the at that time, the US was 25% of global consumption, the European nations 25% of global consumption. Today the US is 28%. So we've grown faster than the world on a whole. Europe is 18% of global consumption. So very little economic growth in that period. And I think that's the fallout of bad energy policies that made energy expensive and unreliable and actually reduced in the consumption of energy, as well as the production of energy. We care about this because we want a strong, vibrant economy, national defense in Europe as our main ally in defending the Western world. Obviously in a world that's becoming increasingly dangerous. But in the in that EU sort of broader policies, well over $1 trillion were spent, almost a half a trillion just in Germany alone. Again, in this attempt to transform the energy system, the electrical grid capacity, EU as a whole is double today what it was 20 years ago, but the total electricity output has been reduced in Germany by almost 20%, in the United Kingdom by well over 25%. And it's led to this export of industries to Asia. They've left the European Union and gone to Asia. And so to me, we want to see energy prices come down in the U.S. and in the EU so we can reindustrialize our nation, move those industries that have moved overseas back. And I think attacking, tackling climate change is much trickier than people think. The, you know, Germany went from 80% of their energy from hydrocarbons before all the money and the expenditures to 75%. Same thing in the United Kingdom. 75% of their energy comes from oil and gas. Today they really just displaced coal, doubled or tripled. Electricity prices, shrunk industrial production and therefore became more vulnerable. We want secure, strong, powerful Europe and of course, a secure, strong, powerful United United States. Quick comments on climate change. Last year was another roughly record low in deaths from extreme weather, about 6 or 7000 people last year. Final numbers aren't in died from extreme weather events, the average over the last decade, maybe around 10,000 deaths. One is more than we want. 10,000 deaths is a lot. But 100 years ago it was 500,000 deaths per year from extreme weather events. So a 98% reduction when global population has gone up three or fourfold. So the safety of our climate and of course this has become become wealthier, isn't that extreme weather events have plummeted. They're roughly flat. It's cyclical. But we haven't seen a trend up or down. But we're more resilient to those things. But on the flip side, we have 2 million, 2 billion people, a quarter of humanity that don't have clean cooking fuels. They burn wood and agricultural waste and dung indoors, just like our ancestors did a few generations ago. That indoor air pollution kills 2 to 3 million people. Like there's an energy crisis with just a cook stove and a propane canister. We could save millions of lives, but instead we've had 2 or 300 times less deaths from extreme weather. But the news is dominated by extreme weather events. People think this is some exploding, unraveling phenomenon. It's just not true. And it's very hard to change the energy system from those 2 billion people that want clean cooking fuels to the 7 billion people that don't live like us. Maybe a billion people live remotely recognizable. I just draw one conclusion we need massively more energy. Massively more energy. We need massively more oil, more natural gas, more coal, more nuclear, next generation geothermal, whatever provides affordable, reliable, secure energy. But look, I spent my life in nuclear at the start, you know, solar, geothermal oil and gas. I don't care where energy comes from, but the world runs on hydrocarbons. 1973 84% of global primary energy was hydrocarbons. 2024 83%. We haven't changed where we get energy, we just need more of it. So tell me if God bless you and Occidental, significant producer of oil and natural gas, a growing producer of those quantities that the world needs so much more, and you've done a lot of it by technology innovation, by finding better, less impactful, more innovative ways to get more oil and gas out of the ground. How is that going? Can you bring the world more oil and gas, and how are you going to do it?
Well, absolutely we can and and I'm excited to talk about it. I think a lot of people in the world don't realize how technical our industry is. It requires a lot of technology, a lot of different technology that's been developed over the years, in the decades. And and we're still working on it, still doing better, still making oil more accessible to additional people, as you're talking about. And that needs to continue to happen. And one of the ways that we do it at Occidental, where we have operations in the United States, Oman, Abu Dhabi and Algeria internationally, but in the domestic US for 50 years, we've been getting incremental oil out of conventional reservoirs using CO2, injecting CO2, which kind of frees up the oil. It energizes the oil. Just like if you put when you shake up a Coke bottle and then you you open it up and it goes everywhere. That's kind of what CO2 does to oil. And that's why you can get more oil out of the ground when you're putting CO2 in. The other thing about CO2 is that when when you put CO2 into an oil reservoir to create that incremental oil, the, the CO2 that it takes to do that, you can when you burn the oil that, that the emissions from that is equal to or less than what you've had to inject to get that oil. So you end up with a net zero carbon barrel of oil or very close to it. So, so when you have that kind of process, then you're not putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. You're actually either reducing it or it's equal. So it's a good way to make oil production cleaner too. But to do that, what we have to do is we have to have the CO2. And so we feel like, we, we're developing a technology that's going to be useful not just in the United States but around the world. And that technology is direct air capture. What it does is it takes it with huge fans, 25 foot diameter fans. We can pull air through a contact tower, mix it with some particular kind of fluids and extract that CO2, and then we can use that CO2 in enhanced oil recovery in the reservoirs to make more oil. And so in the United States, that's going to be very, very important, because the way we've modeled production in the United States is we believe that between 2027 and 2030 that we're going to plateau with respect to production in the United States. Beyond that, we'll start to decline. So our energy independence depends on us getting more out of these reservoirs, out of the reservoirs that we have today. And so, we believe that we can get 50 to 70 billion barrels incremental with this process. And you can do it not only in conventional reservoirs, but we can do it in our shale reservoirs as well. And in our shale reservoirs, we only get 10% of the oil in the ground. This, the use of CO2 will almost double that. So it's very much needed. And that's not the only technology that we're working on, to make it happen, but that's the one that that I believe could have an application all around the world.
Fantastic. So a technology innovation to grow oil production. And for as far as global CO2 emissions, you're doing this in a way that's that's CO2 neutral. Yes. And a climate policy around oil, which is about 33% of global primary energy. So a huge slice. I would contrast that to what what has been done globally. We spent round numbers, $10 trillion on wind, solar batteries and increased transmission lines to connect remote production areas to to whatever. And that's 2.6% of global energy. So not a fraction of the energy we get out of oil or natural gas or coal. And I would say economically has been a failure. It's there's going to be a long term role for solar, and there'll probably be a long term role for wind, but they're just in the electricity sector that only delivers 20% of global primary energy. So we've got to keep our heads on about where the how the world runs and where it's coming from. So that's a fascinating innovation. You can grow global oil production, grow oxy's global oil production and, and address greenhouse gas emissions as well.
Yeah, I forgot to add to that, that when you're getting more oil out of these existing reservoirs, then you're not having to build new infrastructure. And avoiding the building of new infrastructure means that's lower emissions as well. So it's a it's a great way to to provide more oil to the world and do it in a way that's much more responsible.
In the Trump administration. We're looking, trying to we're trying to unsanctioned Alaska. Alaska suffered more sanctions under the Biden administration than Iran did. We've got enormous reserves there, conventional reserves there, Gulf of Mexico and across our country. So you've talked about one technical innovation, but we're trying to do as many other things on the regulatory and land access front to massively grow U.S. oil production. And again, I would say two desires for that. One is to lower the costs. You know, we had a lot of inflation during the Biden administration. The inflation of energy costs were a big piece of that. So we're trying to get unshackled businesses like yours across our country to grow energy production and put downward pressure on prices.
So as you as you put downward pressure on prices, well, I appreciate the fact that the administration is doing all you can to take cost out of our business, unnecessary cost, that over the past years with regulations that were were extreme or regulations that that prevented us from from developing some of the reservoirs that we needed to develop and regulations that that put ridiculous things in place that prevented our permitting from going as fast as it needed to go. And so I appreciate the fact that the Trump administration and you are are trying to make sure that while while you're pushing prices down, you're also helping us expand our margin. And that's helpful.
Fantastic. Because of course, the global marketplace sets the price of supply and demand. But if I look back just 15 years ago, in fact, go back to 2010, where I said U.S. and Europe diverge massively on energy policies. Oil prices then were a little over $100 a barrel, and that's in nominal terms. I inflation adjust that to today. That's like $150 a barrel. And today we've got oil prices $60. So phenomenally better for not just the U.S. and Europe but for global consumers. But of course it's put pressure on your business and everyone else in that industry. You've got to innovate massively to have profitability go from $150, inflation adjusted to $60. But I mean, that's the beauty of capitalism. That's the beauty of innovation.
We wouldn't be upset with 70. I'll just.
Say that.
But on another topic, how do you view the relationship between the United States and Europe with respect to energy and oil? And do you do you see anything that could be improved there?
Yeah. Of course. Look, the European Union, the United States biggest trading partner, our oldest and historical ally. And again, we are we are children of Europe. So that's a critically important relationship. In the short run, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Europe, I think proudly standing up and saying, we're not going to depend on Russia anymore. That was a mistake. And I think Putin thought he had this huge leverage. Europe would roll over because they depended on Russian gas, Russian oil, Russian coal. But Europe stood up to that and said, no, we're going to get off Russian energy. And I think the surge of natural gas production in the United States and the huge investments to build liquefied natural gas, LNG export terminals, put the United States in a great place to rise up and displace most all of the Russian gas. We're not fully done yet, but growing production out of Norway and the United States together, I think in the next 12 to 24 months will have Europe completely independent of Russian gas. We can do the same thing in oil, obviously. And so we want to have robust energy trade in the short run. It's dominated by exports from the United States into Europe. But you know, there's a CS, triple D, corporate environmental regulations, the cbam, regulations on methane and methane monitoring that pose great risks to that. And it's look, American producers and you're one of them, a major producer of natural gas as well as oil. We've seen dramatic reductions in methane emissions in among among United States producers. In fact, the decrease in methane intensity has been tremendous. But these regulations could threaten you liability wise to send gas to Europe. They're going to look at your whole global operations and decide if they're virtuous enough. From the regulator's perspective, they could find you based on your global revenues. That's just completely impractical. And I think losing sight of how critical energy is and how good the marketplace, companies and investors and consumers are in driving innovation and demanding improvements. So we're working with our colleagues here in Europe to remove those barriers so we don't see, again, rising energy costs in Europe. In fact, our biggest strategic goal, drive down the price of electricity, drive down the price of industrial fuels like natural gas and transportation fuels in Europe and the United States. And that requires robust trade and innovation. Of course, I believe in the long run, Europe will again turn back to reality of how the world is energized. And of course, there's great shale resources and oil and natural gas. European companies were early pioneers in this global industry, and I think we'll see a swing back to reality there. But in the short term, we can bridge all that with exports from the U.S.. But we need to be strong. We need to be economically strong. And you can't be economically strong or militarily strong if you're not energy strong. So us I think we had we went backwards a few years into the Biden administration, and we certainly have states like California that have followed a European policy that have seen skyrocketing electricity prices and gasoline prices, and in all those places that have those high prices, what happens is they produce less output. California produces less electricity today than it did five years ago than it did ten years ago, and it massively higher price. Guess what? A very wealthy state has the highest adjusted poverty rate in the nation, and even the average income in California has gone from near the top to middle of the barrel. But of course, it's the worst state in the country to be low income. That's what happens with bad energy policies. You've had a history of operating in California and producing energy there and all around the world. How is that operating environment for you?
Well, we left California, and because of the regulations, it was just, it was really preventing us from developing the resources that California really needed at the time. So we left there. We're, and as I said, we're in international locations. But the way we built our portfolio recently has been specifically around eliminating risk and lowering risk. And so we we, back in 2015, 50% of our production was international. And now we've developed a portfolio here in the United States in a lot of it shale. We've gone from 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent to 16.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent, based on the assets that we have in the United States, mostly, but with support from some, from our international operations, we've gone from 650,000 barrels per day back then to 1.4 million barrels per day. And this has been in an environment that supports energy production. And so that's what can happen. We have decades of development yet to do because of the fact that we can do it in in a country that provides the means to make it happen. And, you know, beyond that, we can also add the incremental barrels with our CO2 enhanced oil recovery projects. So we're excited about where we are in the United States, where we will ultimately do some of that in Oman and Abu Dhabi and potentially in Algeria. We'd like to do the same thing. But but where there's regulation and where there's the energy, the industry is so burdened with regulation that can't happen. And so I'm, I support what you're talking about, what you're doing and what you're hoping that the message will be to those that that have shut down their, their energy industries and that that hopefully that will change over time.
If California hadn't pivoted in a, in an energy wrong policy and you were still there and California was our top four oil producer in our country, if California still produced a lot of oil and still produced a lot of natural gas, it had lower energy prices for the state. How would the residents of what would their quality of life be like, particularly for the lower income people? What would it be like today compared to what it is?
Oh, that's maybe the problem that, the people that make the policies don't think about the people that get most impacted by them. And certainly in California, the price of gasoline is so much higher than anywhere else in the United States. So it is impacting the lower income people. And when we were there, we had also we we probably had at least a decade of development left when we left the state. So a lot of companies are leaving. Other oil companies followed us and leaving the state. So it's it's a dire situation for for them and for the people that get impacted by it.
Yeah. My last comment on California. So total oil production of the United States and crude oil is just one piece of total oil that liquid petroleum gases are the natural gas liquids are a huge other component. But the United States produces 24 million barrels a day. You know, well over 20% of the global total and more than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. And we're a net exporter. Yet California imports over 60% of its oil from abroad, tanker ships streaming from the Middle East, from South America to power California. They just gone a different direction from from and of course, New England has gone that same wrong direction. But look, life is long. Life is long. Our goal is to pivot, to see energy production surge. Costs for Americans and citizens of the world go down, wages and job opportunities to go up. And and energy is not the only thing, but I think it's the most important single piece of a thriving, secure economy.
I agree, and in the United States, the opportunity for us when we when we're talking about how to get more oil out of the reservoirs we have and developing Alaska as well. But there's 3.5 trillion barrels of oil in place remaining in the United States. And that's what we're really gearing up to go after. And it's the same elsewhere. There are other places around the world that are still going to have a lot of oil remaining in the ground. Oil will be around for the next hundred years. And and what I'm hoping to is that people will listen to the message and will understand that we should never think that oil needs to go away. We just need to manage the emissions. And as long as we can do the things that that are necessary to lower methane, continue lowering that, but also to deal with the CO2 issue. And again, CO2 enhanced oil recovery is a way to do that. So if we can get that to the point where, we are managing the impact on the environment and we are we're getting there, then oil should never have to go away. And it's the the highest intensity and lowest cost fuel in the world.
Yeah. I think we've just we don't know how to run a world without oil, without natural gas, without coal. It's just you can't have a modern world. We can't have our lifestyles today without those energy sources. In fact, I'm so thankful we had global life expectancy at birth 30 years throughout all of human history until about 200 years ago. And then the arrival, this explosion in available energy from hydrocarbons, that 30 year life expectancy at birth globally, 73 years today just an enormous improvement, yet not shared across the board, right? Not shared. A billion people live these great wonderful lifestyles, get to wear fancy clothes and temperature controlled rooms and fly on planes to go to conferences. How wonderful is that? That lucky billion consume about 13 barrels of oil per person per year, where the other 7 billion consume three, and in Africa it's one. So we we need way more than double global oil production to get the other 7 billion people just halfway to where our quality of life is. Of course, natural gas is cheaper than oil, and it's going to displace some of the applications of oil. So you know that that energy mix will continue to grow, natural gas share will continue to drift upwards and oils will slowly drift downwards. But we just need massively more oil. So when you gave those numbers of you used to produce 640,000 barrels a day, that's a huge quantity. And now that's 1.4 million barrels a day. To me, that just means better lifestyles for Americans, for Europeans, and for the citizens of the world. But,
But, Chris, one of the things that's been kind of a burden on our industry, too, are those that that still have this mindset. And banks were one, there were there was a time when banks were deciding not to fund oil and gas projects. So but some of those banks are now coming back. And in fact, I talked to one yesterday that had kind of abandoned us and now are back wanting to do business in the oil and gas industry. But the other thing that would be very helpful for us would be if if other businesses like the tech industry, if they would get on board with understanding that, all the stats that you put out that said that we're really not in a, in a bad situation with respect to climate right now, and we but we're committed to to do better. We've got to have the tech people on board with what we're trying to accomplish here. And, from our perspective, we would love for them to understand the concept that we're talking about. And we've tried to to lay it out to people, and we're trying to get the message out as best we can. I appreciate this forum to be able to do that. But but we the administration, I know you're trying to do your best to help people educate people about how we need to think about oil, but could you specifically target the tech industry? And also, I'd love for you to come and talk to our investors who who would get the message that this is a long time thing. It's a long term and it's important for the world.
I agree, the tech industry and banking industries are critical. They're gigantic industries. They've done great things to improve the world, but they've been they've been very off base on on energy. And the tech industry is eagerly engaged in this issue right now.
With natural gas, mostly.
Yes, mostly. Well, electricity. Right. Because they need artificial intelligence. I know we both believe is just a transformative technology. We want to drive it forward as fast as possible because of the national security implications. Not only do we want to drive it forward faster for economic development, to me, the advancement of scientific progress, but it matters for national security. China is way ahead of us and the rest of the world in AI, they're going to be the dominant power in the world today. The United States is the is the most impactful power in the world and has been for 80 years. And I think that's that's a world where comfortable to live in. That's a world that's been great. We want to keep it that way so that tech companies are very interested in how can we get more electricity. And of course, that that gets them to dive into the numbers on, on on energy. Yeah, they I think like so many European politicians thought if we just grow this subsidies and we put up a few more wind turbines and solar panels and get better batteries and develop long transmission lines, we're going to get rid of hydrocarbons in ten or 20 or 40 years. And, you know, but of course the the math never supported that. And now they're engaging in that math. Like we hear this term energy transition all the time. The banks repeatedly say it. The tech companies have said it a lot. And I always say what's transitioned is the money. Starting in 2020, we spend more money every year developing low carbon, mostly wind, solar, batteries and transmission lines. We spend more money on that than oil, gas and coal combined. So over $1 trillion versus well less than $1 trillion. And we've been doing that for years. But yet 2.6% of global energy, in fact, you can't make a wind turbine, a solar panel or a battery without massive amounts of hydrocarbons. Not just not just the energy high temperature process, heat from hydrocarbons to manufacture those materials, but the the wind, wind blades are made out of oil. That tower is is steel, which is iron and coal. And then the bases are, you know, are concrete, are basically natural gas, coal and lime. So it's it's we need some energy reality to return. It is important for the banks because the less funding of hydrocarbons just means the higher prices and the slower the growth in the production of hydrocarbons, which again means a weaker United States, a weaker Europe and a much poorer world.
And also, some people don't realize that 20% of the natural gas that's produced in the United States comes from the production of oil. It's natural gas, it's associated with the production of oil. And so that's another reason why we need the all the other industries to understand that oil has to be produced. 20% is a big number.
Thank you. Look,
One minute.
Yes, sir. Just check it out. I want to.
Go over, but.
But I would say fantastic dialogue with you. I'm thrilled. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. I've only been in government a little more than a year. I've got to thank President Trump a for hiring me. He may not be as happy about that hire. Or maybe he is, I don't know. But he's passionate about energy. I mean, East Coast real estate developer is not an energy guy, but he knows in his gut that everything relies on energy. And if you get energy right, opportunity is there for everyone. And if you get energy wrong, your opportunity set your threat to your economy. Your threat to your national security is dire. He's all in on energy. And again, not just in the United States, but part of his message, sometime tough message to Europe is come with us. Let's be all in at energy. Let's make the Western free, democratic world so powerful that we're that we're not at risk from adversaries that have a different belief in the value of human life and human freedom and human prosperity.
Absolutely. And thank you, Chris, for being here.
Thanks so much, Vicki.