that would be john hofmeister, citizens for affordable energy founder and ceo, former president of the ask you about gas prices. i will get to keystone, i promise. but i have to ask you about gas. there's a spike going on here. are we going to see $5 a gallon gasoline? i know you have talked about it before. >> well, certainly in some parts of the country, i believe we will, stuart. whether that's california, new york, illinois. these are high tax states. and so that elevates the price to the consumer. but this is the fifth year in a row that we have seen crude oil prices jump in the first quarter. even with europe in recession, even with the u.s. contracting in the fourth quarter of last year, we're still seeing crude oil prices jump because we remain at the mercy of an international cartel, setting prices and we have no plan in this country. i said to senator obama in 2007, stuart, if he doesn't do something, about drilling in this country, in a major way, and also working on natural gas as a transportation fuel, we are going to see endless pain at the pump, and the american consumer

with more on this, john hofmeister, former shell oil ceo. welcome back to the show.ays great to have you. you told our producer something i thought was interesting on this. you said this year marks the fifth year in a row that crude-oil prices have risen, and there has been no administrative response to this. tell us what you mean. >> well, five years in a row, january has launched a rise in the crude-oil price which has been followed by a rise in the pump price, and american consumers have really been taken to the cleaners by the rising crude price, which is set by an international cartel. if we want to do something about the international cartel we need federal government at the presidential level to try to get an alternative fuel into the mix, such as natural gas. if we had natural gas as a transportation fuel as a major effort in this country -- and we have been saying this for five years. this is not new. in 2013 -- this is five years old. and if we have been doing of the last five years we could say to the oil pricing cartel, namely opec, you know what to we ar

joining us right now, is john hofmeister, he's the founder and ceo for citizens for affordable energyi know there are a lot of reasons that you could see gas prices moving higher. but, rel, when you talk about it, there's more .more nfrg that's being found, more and more that's being pumped. what do you think is the cause behind this? >> this is the fifth year in a row, becky, that we've seen this early year rise in the crude oil price followed by rise necessary gasoline price. and what it amounts to in my opinion is while we have seen increases in natural gas production and in liquids production and in oil production in this country, it's still not enough to make a material difference on the supply side. and so we're still depending upon imports. and, really, we really have to go in a different direction for a solution to get out of this trap. >> what do you mean? >> well, this is a trap for the consumer because all the new people back in the job market, they're going to be paying a lot more for fuel. that's unfortunate. what we have to do is we have to introduce competition into oil