Energy Sec. Wright on US Energy to China, South Korea

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00:00I want to start with this deal that President Trump was hinting at with China, talking about

00:05Alaska oil. What details can you provide us with? What contours of this transaction do you expect

00:12to come to light? Look, China is by far the world's largest importer of oil and importer

00:21of natural gas. The U.S. is by far the world's largest exporter of natural gas and by far the

00:27world's largest producer of oil. So there's so much space for mutually beneficial deals between

00:32the U.S. and China. Alaska was mentioned in that deal, dialogues, enormous reserves on the Alaskan

00:40slope. They've been strangled by the Biden administration and Alaskan production's been

00:44in decline, but lots of room for that production to grow, lots of room to bring natural gas from

00:49the north slope of Alaska and bring that to all of our allies along the East Asian Rim or frankly

00:56anywhere in the world. But President Trump is just a master negotiator. He finds out what is it

01:01that's critical to the Chinese, what is it that's critical to the United States, and finds that

01:06sweet spot of a deal that works for both countries. Could potentially the United States fill a gap

01:11if China decides to buy less energy from Russia, especially since the U.S. government sanctioned

01:17Royce Neft and Luke oil?

01:22Absolutely. Absolutely. Today, the U.S. produces 50 percent more oil than Russia or Saudi Arabia,

01:29and it just puts not just the United States, but the world in a better position. Can we squish out

01:34half of Russian oil exports and still have a roughly balanced oil market? Absolutely, we can.

01:41Have you been in touch as well with your counterparts in South Korea? The president coming back on this trip

01:46talked about the tariff rate in South Korea and the plan for them to buy oil and gas in vast

01:52quantities, part of that trade deal.

01:58Yes. I've been in dialogues with the Korean staff since I arrived in the office. Korea is a great

02:05industrial nation, also short on energy resources, but long on other assets. So yeah, lots of room for

02:13United States to grow our role in supplying natural gas, oil, and frankly, nuclear technology to South

02:19Korea. I bring this up because it sounds like, are you preparing some sort of trip to the Asia Pacific

02:24if you have to meet with your Chinese counterparts and your South Korean counterparts for the United

02:28States to send more energy to that part of the world?

02:30Oh, I'd go wherever the president tells me. But yes, I would be going to Asia in a few weeks and

02:39heck, I may be going sooner than that. You know, I'll get debriefed from all the dialogues and all

02:44what must be done promptly in the follow-up could be heading there very shortly. But I don't know about

02:49that right now. But of course, Asia is the center of the world economy after the United States.

02:55So yeah, that's a critical alliances, critical partnerships, and critical oil demand sources.

03:00Mr. Secretary, I feel like we should have a map here of all the places where you've got trips

03:04planned, because I suspect that you're going to be heading to Greece soon, too. And the whole idea

03:08of how much the U.S. is exporting in terms of energy to the European region, especially as they reduce

03:15reliance on Russia. Can you tell us anything about how that relationship is developing?

03:20Actually, it's been great dialogues. I think the European nations, the war in Ukraine really

03:29crystallized. Yes, it wasn't a good idea to have all of our key energy supply coming from Russia,

03:36largest supplier of oil to them, largest supplier of natural gas to them, largest supplier of coal to

03:42Europe. And the United States has slid in to displace Russia as the largest supplier of natural gas to

03:48Europe. We can do the same thing with oil. And I think we're today the second largest supplier of

03:53coal to Europe. So I think there's mutual agreement on both sides there. Certainly there's some

04:00regulations in Europe, CSDDD, which is just a way overreach in the regulatory regime that's going to

04:07make it sticky to ramp up energy movement as fast as we'd like. But we're in constant dialogue to fix

04:13those problems. I'm excited about the future relationship between the European nations and

04:18the United States. It's always been good, but I think it's going to grow a lot.

04:21Mr. Secretary, a lot of people who come on this show talk about their concerns about higher energy

04:25prices in the United States. They talk about artificial intelligence, the power demands,

04:30the inability to really provide the energy that would be required to expand at the pace that a lot of

04:36AI giants are talking about. How do you plan to mitigate that? Is there a level at which power prices

04:43get so expensive that the United States will reduce some of the exports to the rest of the world?

04:52Well, there are actually different factors that control them. Like our large exports of natural gas

04:58today are actually still relatively modest compared to the amount of gas we produce. And we can easily

05:04produce vastly more natural gas today. So power prices, the problem isn't the price of natural gas.

05:10The problem is the infrastructure, you know, generation facilities, transmission lines.

05:16The Biden administration for four years forced the closure of a lot of coal plants. A few gas plants

05:22prevented the building of new coal and natural gas power plants. They built a lot of unreliable

05:29intermittent electricity that spread all over the country that takes more transmission assets.

05:34All of that goes into the rate base and has pushed up prices. Frankly, it's part of the reason why

05:39President Trump got elected. So we're having to reverse all those things, stop the closure of coal plants,

05:45make it easier to build new natural gas plants, make new sources that want to come on, be successful

05:52commercially, not dependent upon subsidies and not require massive new transmission investments that

05:59all just go on to the rate payers. So we're doing a lot of things at FERC. We had a big announcement

06:04last Thursday, I probably can't go into here, but specifically aimed at artificial intelligence,

06:10how we can speed new firm generation without driving up the price of electricity. I share the American

06:17consumers' worries about the recent rises in price of electricity over the last four years,

06:22and I'm working seven days a week to stop those price rises and enable the United States to lead

06:28in artificial intelligence. We've seen one of the most significant announcements from this

06:32administration when it comes to nuclear. The government is planning this partnership,

06:36$80 billion for nuclear reactors with a Canadian company, Westinghouse. Who will develop them and

06:42where? Can you give us more details about this? Oh, I would call Westinghouse an American company.

06:51It's a legacy American company and it's majority owned by the Americans. It has a Canadian partner

06:56in Cameco. But it's an American company. This is a plan to partner across the country at a few different

07:06locations to build, as you saw in the announcement, they gave dollar amounts, but a large amount of power.

07:12Think of order 10 gigawatts of new electric generating production capacity and to do it in a way that's

07:18efficient. So instead of one here and one starting a few years later, we want to stage in the construction

07:25of these plants to most efficiently use construction workers, assemblers, fabrication, so that we lower the

07:32cost of nuclear generation, re-stand up the supply chain in the United States. This is quite an exciting

07:38project. And more details will come out as we fill in, as we fill in those dots. But that President

07:44Trump promised to relaunch nuclear energy, unleash a nuclear renaissance in the United States. This is

07:50a big part of that effort. And just, I wanted to get your take on a reversal we've seen from Bill Gates,

07:55someone who's long talked about climate change. He's sort of pivoting his stance. And according to his

08:00staff, you recently met with him. Did you have a hand in how now he's talking about energy?

08:09I've had multiple great dialogues with Bill Gates over the last year, multiple times and at some

08:15length. Of course, he's a very thoughtful, successful entrepreneur. And climate change is a real thing.

08:20It's a real challenge. It's just not remotely close to the world's top challenge. And the problem is,

08:26by putting at the top challenge, the ineffective things governments have done have raised the price

08:32of energy, lowered the reliability of the energy system, and they've stood in the way of efforts to

08:38combat hunger, food insecurity, energy security, education, and all the other global challenges.

08:44So yeah, look, Bill and I have had great dialogues. He's done fabulous stuff in public health around

08:50the world. And I'm thrilled to see him talk in a more candid way about this issue.

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