Mark Cuban’s Question to Matt Gaetz on Energy Costs Takes Off Online

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban‘s question to Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, on energy costs took off on social media on Saturday.

On Thursday, Cuban—who has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president—asked on X, formerly Twitter, “For all supporters of the Republican Nominee [former President Donald Trump]. What specifically will he do to lower grocery and other prices ? I’m curious.”

For Harris’ part, she has proposed a crack down on price-gouging from companies to lower the cost of Americans’ grocery bills.

Gaetz, a Trump ally, responded on X on Friday, “Lower energy costs by increasing production.”

He was referring to Trump’s policy of increasing oil production in the United States.

“I make this pledge to the great people of America, I will end the devastating inflation crisis immediately, bring down interest rates and lower the cost of energy,” Trump said in July at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee. “We will drill, baby, drill.”

Cuban responded to Gaetz’s post on Saturday mid-morning, asking, “Matt, What’s the break even price below which it’s un profitable to drill in the USA ?”

The break-even price for oil is the price at which an oil producer can make a profit by drilling a new well or the price needed for an oil-exporting country to balance its budget. A balanced budget is when revenues are equal to expenditures.

Cuban’s post has received 1.7 million views as of Saturday evening.

When reached for comment by Newsweek, Gaetz’s office referred to the congressman’s reply post to Cuban on Saturday evening, in which the congressman asked artificial intelligence (AI) to answer the Shark Tank star’s question.

“The breakeven price for drilling oil varies greatly depending on the specific location and the technology used. Some areas in the United States, particularly in the Permian Basin, have breakeven prices as low as $20-$40 per barrel due to the combination of rich resources and advanced drilling techniques. Other areas, particularly ones with more complex geology or more stringent regulations, can have breakeven prices over $60 per barrel,” Gaetz’s post read, in part.

Gaetz also said that Harris wants to ban fracking in Pennsylvania, a claim the vice president denied during her debate against Trump on Tuesday night. This is a change in Harris’ position from just a few years ago when she called for a fracking ban in 2019 when she was running for president in the 2020 election.

Fracking, meanwhile, is a way to extract gas and oil which involves injecting water, sand and/or chemicals into a well to break up underground bedrock.

Newsweek reached out to Cuban via email for comment on Saturday evening.

According to data collected by Dr. Valerie Thomas, Anderson-Interface Chair of Natural Systems Professor at Georgia Tech, the Trump presidency’s best year for oil production was 2019, in which 12.3 million barrels of oil was produced per day. Meanwhile, the Biden administration oversaw the production of 12.9 million barrels per day in 2023.

The Biden administration, however, is also working toward a clean energy future. Under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which President Joe Biden signed in August 2022, over 3.4 million American families benefited from $8.4 billion in IRA tax credits to lower the cost of clean energy and energy efficiency home upgrades and over 250,000 Americans claimed the IRA’s electric vehicle (EV) tax credits, saving roughly $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, gas prices are falling across the U.S. with the national average gas price at $3.24 per gallon as of Thursday, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA). This represents a decrease from last month’s average of $3.44 per gallon for regular gas and an even larger drop from September of last year, when prices were at $3.84 per gallon.