“They’re replacing $20 oil with $80 oil, that’s the problem,” Chanos said in an interview on “Wall Street Week” recently posted on the TV show’s website. “What were really high return-on-capital businesses are becoming more mundane return-on-capital businesses.”

Chanos, the founder of Kynikos Associates LP, said this month that he’s shorting some of the biggest names in the energy industry, especially natural gas producers, because of a potential surplus that he’s called a “disaster waiting to happen.”

Asked to name specific companies Sunday, he said he’s “leery of the very leveraged guys in any company that’s running negative cash flow after capital spending.”

“They’re not covering the dividends or their buybacks, so names like Chevron, British Gas/Royal Dutch and of course some of the big national companies, the Petrobrases of the world.”

Chanos’s comments follow the collapse of oil prices. While Brent crude, the global benchmark, has rebounded to about $65 a barrel from a low in the mid-$40s in January, it’s still down more than 40 percent from June.

Brent for July settlement declined 95 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $62.77 a barrel at 11:05 a.m. Wednesday New York time on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract earlier fell to $62.55, the lowest since April 23. WTI for July delivery dropped 16 cents to $57.87 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent traded at a premium of $4.90 to WTI.

At the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference in Las Vegas this month, Chanos said he’s betting against shares of Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BG Group Plc, which Shell is in the process of buying, as well as Chevron Corp.

LNG Plants

“Wall Street Week” is produced by SkyBridge Media, an affiliate of SkyBridge Capital, the fund-of-funds business founded by Anthony Scaramucci, a host of the show.

SkyBridge, which sometimes has other business relationships with the show’s participants, advertisers and sponsors, pays Fox stations in key markets to broadcast the show and also streams it online every Sunday at 11 a.m. in New York.

Chanos also reiterated on the show his conclusion that “enormously expensive” liquefied natural gas plants under construction pose a looming challenge for the industry.

At the SkyBridge conference, he said demand for LNG has been flat for the past few years and capacity is going to “skyrocket” once new liquefaction facilities go into production.

Helge Lund, chief executive officer of BG, later rebuffed Chanos’s view, saying LNG will supply a greater share of the world’s energy and demand is growing. The combination of BG and Shell is expected to create the biggest LNG supplier.

Scaramucci closed the show by asking Chanos for “an actionable idea.”

Chanos advised investors to “short the North American frackers.”

“It’s a flawed business model,” he said. “I agree with my friend David Einhorn who’s been short in the space for three years.”