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Wright Discusses Gas Prices, the Strategic Reserve and Iran on News 12 Long Island

April 20, 2026 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:10:52

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright told News 12 Long Island that households across the tri-state region were feeling higher gasoline, diesel and home heating prices during the Iran conflict, according to the Department of Energy’s upload of the interview. Wright said President Trump had declined to pass the Iran problem to the next president, and that the administration had carried out a coordinated release of 400 million barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and reserves around the world, and had changed refining regulations on gasoline so additional supply could be produced for the summer to tamp down prices.

Asked whether prices could still be above average a year later, Wright said no, predicting meaningfully lower prices by then and hoping for relief much sooner, while acknowledging the timing depended on the end of the conflict. He said he regularly briefed the President on the price effects of each action and that the President approved every creative idea he brought, with lower prices and job opportunities as the dominant objectives, as Wright described the conversations.

Why it matters

The interview sets the administration’s consumer-facing timeline — a difficult few weeks, then lower prices within a year — and names the two tools it says it has already used: the coordinated reserve release and gasoline refining rule changes.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins News 12 Long Island - April 19, 2026”, 2026-04-20 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-04-20). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.