Cruz: There’s Been an Effort by Saudi Arabia, Russia to Put U.S. Energy Companies Out of Business

Monday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) discussed the economic catastrophe in Texas with the collapse in energy prices.

Cruz said the collapse is a result of Saudi Arabia and Russia “flooding the market to cause the price to plummet” in an effort to bankrupt the smaller independent energy companies in the United States and put them out of business.

“Last Friday, I flew to D.C. to meet with the president to meet with CEOs of major energy companies,” Cruz told host Ed Henry. “We spent two hours talking about how we can combat that to prevent the Saudis and Russians from bankrupting all the Texas producers, all of the U.S. energy producers. I think the keys to that are going to be number one, putting real pressure on the Saudis. I have talked with the Saudis multiple times, the president’s talked to the Saudis to stop waging economic warfare on the United States.”

He continued, “I’m hopeful based on their commitments they’re going to pull back and end that effort. But secondly — this is what we spent a lot of time Friday talking about — we need to make sure that the energy companies that are facing this massive attack, particularly the small independent energy companies have access to capital, that they’re not frozen out of being able to get a line of credit to stay alive because the objective of the Saudis and Russians was to bankrupt them all and put them out of business. That would be really bad for the national security and economic security of our country.”

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