Geoffrey Pyatt is the Assistant Secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources. Pyatt speaks on America’s global energy priorities at a briefing organised by the Washington Foreign Press Center. United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU attended. Excerpts:
CERAWeek
Last week I spent four days in Houston, Texas at CERAWeek, which is the world’s largest energy conference. And it was a particularly opportune moment, both to do a lot of the kind of intensive energy-focused coordination that ENR does all the time, but also, I think, to take the temperature of the international energy community at a moment of profound transformation.
For me, there were two key takeaways from the CERAWeek discussion, and then an area of future focus. The two takeaways were both the continued acceleration of the global energy transition, and the especially important American leadership in that regard. The Inflation Reduction Act in particular is clearly changing the conversation here domestically, but also internationally, about the opportunities around new clean energy technologies, ranging from carbon sequestration to clean hydrogen to advanced battery storage technologies.
And the – all of the issues around the acceleration of the electrification of our energy systems – transportation, lots and lots of focus in Houston on artificial intelligence and the huge growth in demand for power that is going to create for cloud computing centers here in the United States and internationally; but also, and I think as an American energy diplomat, a particular point of pride, how American companies are leading the charge in this regard, leveraging the opportunities that the Inflation Reduction Act is creating, the degree to which the IRA has really supercharged an energy transition that was already well underway.
The other framing aspect of the conversations in Houston actually built on what I did the Friday before traveling to Houston, which was the annual U.S.-EU Energy Council. We were very pleased to have Commissioner Kadri Simson and Director General Ditte Jorgensen both at the State Department for the annual Energy Council. This year in particular was a celebration of the tremendous progress that we have made in our transatlantic energy relationship, the degree to which Europe has exceeded expectations in de-risking its exposure to Russian energy coercion – dramatically reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian oil, gas, coal, and looking to the future, nuclear fuel – but also the very strong alignment between U.S. and European objectives as we seek to navigate the disruption of global markets that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the weaponization of Russia’s energy resources has prompted.
And then the area of future focus – and I think we’ll see more on this in the weeks ahead – are the issues around critical minerals, which is an issue where ENR has led the State Department’s work internationally, including through our flagship initiative, the Mineral Security Partnership, which seeks to bring together likeminded countries around the world to mobilize resources and mobilize our private sectors to reduce our dependence on a single country as the principal supplier of the energy minerals that are so important to our transition. As some of my European colleagues put it in Houston, we have to work very, very hard to ensure that an era of European dependence on Russian oil and gas is not followed by an era of collective dependence on China for all of these processing and extraction of critical minerals.
In that regard, there were some really interesting conversations, especially with our private sector companies, looking at what the State Department is doing through MSP, through MINVEST, our private sector partnership; with SAFE, the energy security NGO here in Washington. And as I said to Dan Yergin at one point, I think in some ways the conversation around critical minerals is a little bit like where the conversation around oil was in the 1970s after the oil shocks and the creation of the International Energy Agency.
Critical minerals
We are starting to think about these critical minerals not just as a commodity issue but as a question of national security. And it’s in that spirit that we approach this issue, and it’s in that spirit that we are working with the 15 countries and economies that are part of the MSP coalition, significantly now representing more than half of global GDP. You will see a bit more on this, I think, next week when Secretary Blinken will be back in Europe. But you’ve also seen the statements from Under Secretary Fernandez, including around the SAFE Summit two weeks ago, and all of the work that we are doing in the MSP context to mobilize partners, to mobilize resources, to leverage what the White House has done through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, and to, as I said, approach these questions not just as an issue of industrial policy or as a commodity question but as a matter of national security.
Recent Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure
So let me begin by just saying my heart goes out to the millions of Ukrainians who’ve been affected by the latest wave of Russian attacks that began on Friday, the biggest single series of air strikes against energy infrastructure since the start of the war. This is a focus of tremendous attention across the administration, including Secretary Blinken. We are working very closely with allies and partners around the world.
I also want to note just our tremendous, tremendous admiration for the Ukrainian energy workers who are responding to this situation. Just this morning I had a long discussion with the Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the CEO of Ukrenergo, the national grid operator. Volodymyr described to me the recovery efforts that are being made in Kharkiv, in Burshtyn, in Krivyi Rih, in Dnipro, in Odesa. We have seen a complex set of tactics by Putin – who spent, by the way, hundreds of millions of dollars in munitions in these series of attacks. There has been tremendous progress over the past few days in recovery, but there has also been great damage.
I will note some of the good news, which is that the passive protection measures that the United States and our European allies have been helping to support – did prove its utility at a number of sites. But Putin was able to inflict significant damage as well. And I just want to underline how outrageous it is that the Kremlin continues to target these civilian objects with no military objective, simply to cause pain and suffering among Ukrainian citizens. And we will respond.
I will host tomorrow another in the series of G7+ energy sector support videos that the United States helped to organize, at the time jointly with our German allies, starting in October of 2022. This will be one of the most important of these calls that we’ve done. We will have Minister Galushchenko from Kyiv, but also Mr. Kudrytskyi and other Ukrainian officials, to present their damage assessment and also their immediate requirements.
We need to do several things at the same time. We will be seeking to mobilize immediate assistance, as we have been doing since October of ’22 when these energy sector attacks began. We will also be continuing our work to focus on Ukraine’s long-term objective of building a future energy system that is cleaner, greener, and fully aligned with European standards.
But I want to emphasize also that Putin is failing. This is – we are now at the end of the third winter of Russia’s war against the people of Ukraine. Ukraine has demonstrated tremendous resilience, thanks in large part to the courage of energy workers from companies like Ukrenergo and DTEK. The lights have stayed on. Putin has failed in that effort. He has lost Europe as an energy market. And we are committed to ensuring that that failure continues.
I think – you asked about future resources. Last June, at the London Ukraine Recovery Conference, Secretary of State Blinken announced $522 million in energy sector assistance to tackle those two challenges that I talked about, both the immediate reconstruction and recovery, but also the long-term resilience and Europeanization of Ukraine’s energy system. That remains our guiding objective. We are working very, very hard and hope very much that Congress will approve the President’s national security supplemental as soon as they come back from the Easter recess. I think the attacks of the past few days make that action even more urgent. I know that the White House is optimistic that we will get a positive outcome from Congress, and that’s certainly what I hear from members of Congress when I speak to them.
So we will assess where we are in terms of requirements. We will coordinate with our allies, who are carrying a significant amount of the burden. And then we will begin our work looking towards the next Ukraine Recovery Conference, which will be hosted by Germany in Berlin at the middle of June.
Preventing potential disaster
So we see a consistent pattern of irresponsible Russian actions. You mentioned the attack on the Dnipro hydropower plant. Last night I saw in Ukrainska Pravda the photographs of the destroyed Kharkiv central heating plant and thermal power plant. DTEK has shared with me the pictures of destruction at Burshtyn. Again, Putin’s actions have crossed every line in terms of his military tactics and the destruction that he is inflicting with no military objective on the people of Ukraine and Ukraine’s infrastructure. President von der Leyen and all of our European allies have made clear that Putin and Russia has to be held accountable for those actions, and that, as President von der Leyen has put it, the aggressor will pay. So there is a cost attached to this.
But in the meantime, we are going to do everything in our power to ensure that Putin’s war continues to be a strategic failure for the Kremlin, and that the Ukrainians have the resources and the wherewithal they need to prevail and to continue to sustain the extraordinary resilience that they’ve demonstrated up until now.
Iraq and Iran
I had the honor of joining yesterday’s meeting between my boss, Secretary of State Blinken, and the deputy prime minister, foreign minister of Iraq, Fuad Hussein. These issues were front and center in those conversations, as they will be front and center when the Iraqi prime minister comes here to the United States. I’ve been working with the Iraqi ambassador on that visit, including opportunities for engagement with American energy companies, because of the central role that in particular the oil and gas industry plays in the Iraqi economy, but also because of the issue that you referred to, which is the vulnerability created by Iraq’s requirement for energy imports, both gas and power, from Iraq.
I will note a couple – there are a couple of different issues that are wrapped around this. One is the waiver, and I think they – the department’s actions on that issue speaks for itself. This is a topic on which I regularly engage with members of Congress. Another is the work that we continue to do with officials in Baghdad, with officials in Ankara, and with the KRG on the reopening of the ITP pipeline, which is an energy asset that the United States very much wishes to see brought back online because of the critical role that that provides in helping to sustain the energy economy of the KRG region, but also because of the product, the crude oil that that pipeline delivers to global and especially European markets that are hungry for non-Russian sources of supply.
I am – I will be part of the discussions during the Iraqi prime minister’s visit, in particular the work of the HCC. And we talked a little bit about that with the deputy prime minister yesterday. And in that HCC context, it’s very clear that ENR issues around energy – energy security, gas, electricity, oil, decarbonization – will be front and center. We also have been very supportive of the work that Iraq has been doing with global energy companies, including American companies like Baker Hughes, which has projects to capture some of the gas which is currently vented and flared from Iraqi oil fields.
We’ve also been very supportive of the work that Total has been doing, the multi-billion-dollar investment that Total has made for a similar gas capture and energy initiative. This is a critical part of helping to build Iraq’s own energy security and to achieve what the prime minister has stated is his goal of ending dependence on Iranian energy within the next three or four years.
In that regard, I also look forward to traveling myself to Iraq hopefully later this spring to advance the work that will be done during the prime minister’s visit, and in particular to advance our agenda around supporting Iraq’s energy security.
The U.S. and Iraq
I don’t want to put myself in the middle of the commercial negotiations between our companies that are active in KRG and the government in Baghdad. But what I will underline is I know that the Iraqi Government is interested in attracting more foreign investment to its energy sector, and in particular to modernize that energy sector, to make it cleaner, to maximize the availability of energy for Iraqi citizens.
That will be much more difficult as long as the issues around the ITP remain unresolved. This is also an issue that I’ve had regularly on my agenda with Turkish Energy Minister Bayraktar, and it’s a regular topic of conversation, not just in the U.S.-Iraq context but also in the U.S.-Türkiye context. So I hope very much that we will be able to see progress on this issue in the run-up to and around the prime minister’s visit. But that ultimately is going to depend on what’s really a three-sided conversation between Baghdad, Erbil, and Ankara, and then also the commercial negotiations with our companies that are on the ground.
Energy partnership with Türkiye
So let me say a couple of things here. One is just to underline my personal focus on our energy partnership with Türkiye and the importance that we place on making continued progress. I have had the opportunity to meet with Energy Minister Bayraktar on three different continents, I think, as we’ve all traveled around the world. I last saw him in Riyadh when we were together there in January. And then last month, I was very pleased also to see Minister Bayraktar’s deputy when we were together at the IEA 50th anniversary in Paris. So we are maintaining a regular tempo of engagement, both between Washington and the energy ministry and authorities in Ankara, but also with the foreign ministry. And I am very glad to have a really strong relationship with my counterpart in the Turkish foreign ministry as well.
I think as we look to the future, the next step, we hope very much to be able to welcome Minister Bayraktar here to Washington in the weeks ahead over the course of the spring. The ball is really in his court in terms of figuring out when we can manage that. But we have a very rich agenda of work to do together following the discussions between Secretary Blinken and Minister Fidan in the context of the strategic mechanism. We see this both on European energy security, and Türkiye has played a very important role as the host of the Southern Gas Corridor, in helping to diversify European energy supplies and European gas supplies away from dependence on Russia; as the host of multiple LNG liquefaction facilities, which have received a lot of American LNG over the past two years since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
You may have seen a speech that I gave to a forum in Alexandropolis about two weeks ago. It’s on the State Department website. But I described there our support for the Vertical Corridor, which is designed to bring non-Russian gas up into Central Europe, including to markets like Hungary, Austria, and Slovakia that remain dependent on Russian gas. This will be especially important in the context of what we expect will be the end of transit through Ukraine at the end of this year when the transit contract expires. So there’s an important potential role for Türkiye there as well as an entry point for non-Russian gas into that Vertical Corridor, which would go up through Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, leveraging the gas storage that Ukraine has available in western Ukraine.
And then there are all the issues around energy transition, and I think I’ve shared the story before. I will always remember from my time as ambassador in Athens a visit that I made to Rhodes in I think it was August of 2021, which is when the terrible fires were happening across southwestern Türkiye. The sky was bright orange over the island of Rhodes. It was all the smoke and the flames that were coming from Türkiye, and it was a reminder that, much like my home state of California, much like Greece, Türkiye is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The fact that the Mediterranean has seen some of the most severe sea temperature change of any region of the world and the risks of more extreme fire events, but we are also conscious of the leadership that Türkiye has played in deploying wind and solar and the potential to do much more in this area.
And then finally, one of the follow-ups from the strategic mechanism that I will look forward to discussing with Minister Bayraktar when he comes to Washington is critical minerals, where Türkiye has literally thousands of years of history in mining and the potential to be an important part of our effort to diversify global supply chains for the critical minerals that we need to power the energy transition.
