MODERATOR:
Good morning, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center’s briefing on
the U.S. Global Energy Policy Priorities. My name is Zina Wolfington, and I’m
the moderator for this briefing. This briefing is on the record. The transcript
will be posted on the website fpc.state.gov after the briefing. For the
journalists joining us on Zoom, please take a moment now to rename yourself in
the chat window with your name, outlet, and country.
Our briefer today is
Geoffrey Pyatt, assistant secretary of the State
Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources. Following his opening remarks, I will
open the floor for questions.
And with that, I’m going to turn it over to Assistant Secretary Pyatt.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: Great. Good morning, everybody, and it’s great to be
back at the
Foreign Press Center. I know we’ve got a broad range of interests
and questions this morning, so I’ll try to keep my opening remarks fairly brief.
And just to share a few reflections, 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 [Bureau of Energy Resources] 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 -- 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
Minerals 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 [Minerals Security Partnership], through
MINVEST
[Minerals Investment Network for Vital Energy Security and Transition], our private sector partnership; with
SAFE
[Securing America's Future Energy], 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.
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 14
[correction: 15 MSP partners] 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.
So let me stop my opening comments there, and happy to have the usual broad
range of questions. It’s been a very, very busy couple of months for ENR. I
think I started out 2024 in Riyadh just a couple of weeks after the new year and
have been around the world a couple of times since then, reflecting, I think,
the just tremendous opportunities that we see in the energy security and energy
transition spaces, but also the centrality of so many of these issues to our
overall national security and diplomatic agendas.
MODERATOR: Thank you for the remarks. And
now I would like to open it up for questions. A reminder for journalists joining
us via Zoom -- please be sure your screen includes your name, outlet, and
country. We will start with the questions from the room. If called, please
introduce yourself before your question. We’ll start with you.
QUESTION: Thank you, Zina. Thank you, Ambassador. Iaroslav Dovgopol, UkrInform
News Agency, Ukraine. So, Ambassador, you said -- you mentioned about
circumstances of Russian war in Ukraine, and I obviously have a question
regarding -- would you please reveal the long-term projects related to the
U.S.-Ukraine interaction in the energy domain? And in context of the recent
Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure, does the -- U.S.
Administration have funding in the recently approved budget to help Ukraine in
the energy sector? And is the U.S. planning to provide such assistance any time
soon? And if I may, I have then one more question.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: Okay. So let me begin, Iaroslav, 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.
MODERATOR: You have a follow-up?
QUESTION: And yeah, my second question, thank you. After the recent Russian
attack on the Dnipro hydropower station, how does the United States read these
threats for other major power plants in Ukraine, including NPPs [Nuclear Power
Plants]? And do you have
any interaction with the allies, partners with the Russians, to prevent
potential disaster?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: 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.
MODERATOR: Please.
QUESTION: Diyar Aziz from RUDAW media. I have two questions on Iraq. We know
that the Iraq is heavily dependent on Iran on the electricity.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: Right.
QUESTION: Iraq speaking to both [inaudible] according to some reports, there
hasn’t been a significant [inaudible]. And this led the U.S. in waiving
sanctions in Iraq -- the last time it was the first time that U.S. [inaudible]
sanctioned for Iraq to buy electricity from Iran, which some U.S. Congress
members says that this led the financial lifeline for Iran that Iraq is funding.
So how long are you going to waiving sanctions in Iraq to buy electricity from
Iran? And then how do you see that purpose that Iraq is doing to find
alternatives to the Iranian electricity?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: No, well, thank you very much for the question. There
are a series of absolutely vital issues that are embedded in the question. And 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 [Kurdistan Regional Government] on the reopening of the
ITP [Iraq-Turkey Pipeline] 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 [(US-Iraq) Higher Coordinating Committee]. 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
[TotalEnergies] 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.
QUESTION: [Inaudible] at which they provided about 0.5 percent to the global oil
supply. Now there are some issues between the U.S. companies that are operating
in the Kurdistan region and the Iraqi Government, which the Iraqi Government
says that the U.S. companies are not willing to operate, even the -- with green
light on that. Do you think the Iraqi Government is reasonable that they are not
giving the things that the U.S. companies and the KRG are requesting from the
Iraqi Government from that? Dispute is that they do have around KRG oil exports.
And why this hasn’t happened? Because the U.S. engaging with Türkiye, with Iraq,
and the Kurdistan region. Why it’s been a year that the KRG oil has been stopped
and it’s not resumed?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: So I’ll -- 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.
MODERATOR: Tuna.
QUESTION: Thank you. Thank you very much for that presentation, Mr. Pyatt. It’s
good to see you again here. Thank you very much for the briefing. Tuna Sanli
from Turkish Radio and Television [inaudible]. [Inaudible]
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited Washington, D.C. and met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken. There were broad range of topics on the table, and energy was one of
them. It’s one of the hot topics between two countries, as both Türkiye and the
United States say they look forward to increase the energy cooperation in
various [inaudible]. First of all, can you give us details about that energy
topic in that strategic mechanism meetings between Turkish foreign minister and
the Secretary of State?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: 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
[International Energy Agency]
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.1
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.
MODERATOR: Liudmila.
QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Liudmila Chernova. I’m with Sputnik News. The
Financial Times reported last Friday that the United States had a contact with
Ukraine and urged Kyiv to halt its drone attacks on Russian energy
infrastructure, and warned that it both provokes retaliation from the Russian
side and drives up global energy prices. The question is whether you can confirm
such contacts with Ukraine and also the effect of such effects on the global
prices.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: Yeah. So a couple of things. As much as I admire the
reporting of my longtime friend Chris Miller at the Financial Times, I am not
going to comment on our diplomatic exchanges. But what I will emphasize,
as John
Kirby did from the White House, is that the United States does not encourage or
enable attacks on Russian territory.2
But what we are doing is supporting Ukraine
as they seek to defend their own sovereign territory against a brutal and
unprovoked war that the Kremlin has now unleashed on the people of Ukraine. And
the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin will be held accountable, and we are going to
continue giving the Ukrainians they -- the tools they need to defend their own
sovereign territory.
QUESTION: [Inaudible] prices?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: I have not seen a great shift in global energy prices
in recent weeks. We have seen some dislocation partly for seasonal factors, but
in fact global energy markets are quite stable at this point. And you see that
in response to Putin’s weaponization of his energy resources, the disruptions
created by Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. So I am quite -- and as I
said, the mood at CERAWeek was quite confident about the resilience of global
energy markets at this particular moment in time, in part due to the work of
American energy producers, as the United States has emerged as the
world’s
largest oil and gas exporter.
MODERATOR: We will now take a couple
questions from Zoom. Dmytro Anopchenko, please unmute yourself.
QUESTION: Good morning, Mr. Pyatt. Thank you for taking my question. And thanks
to Foreign Press Center for organizing this. I’ve got one question on Ukraine.
Mr. Pyatt, how would you describe the biggest threats to Ukrainian energy system
on this stage of the war? Because they obviously changed since October when
Ukraine was just preparing to survive during the winter. And also do you still
think that cyber attacks are among those threats? I know that a lot of help was
provided to Ukraine by the U.S. Administration.
According to CNN, Cisco even
provided the special equipment to Ukrainian power plants to be protected from
the cyber attacks. So could you give more details if your office was the part of
this? Do you still think that cyber threats is real and it’s among the top three
priorities for Ukraine? Thank you.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: So Dmytro, on your question, I mean, the first point
is the biggest threat to Ukraine’s energy system is Vladimir Putin and this one
man’s obsession with Ukraine and his unrelenting aggression against the
Ukrainian Government and the people of Ukraine.
Unfortunately, the story of cyber attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is
not a new story. It actually goes back to my tenure as ambassador, and you will
remember in 2015 there were some
quite severe cyber attacks against Ukraine’s
energy infrastructure and then very close cooperation. I was working with Chris
Painter, who was our cyber coordinator at the State Department in those days --
and also with the experts of the Department of Energy, who worked closely with
the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy, with Ukrenergo, and other institutions of the
Ukrainian state -- in order to ensure that Ukraine’s critical infrastructure was
hardened against Russian aggression to the maximum extent possible. I would note
also that my counterpart, our assistant secretary for the
CDP [Cyberspace and Digital Policy] Bureau, was
recently in Kyiv, which I think you can see -- that’s Nate Fick -- and you can see Nate’s travel as a reflection of the fact that our cooperation with Ukraine on
these issues is ongoing.
I’m not going to get into further details there, but just to underline that this
is not new and our support is ongoing, and that I worry about every single
dimension of Putin’s threats to Ukraine’s energy system. The ballistic missiles
that were deployed starting over this weekend, the
Shaheds, the cruise missiles,
the attacks that have been ongoing since October of 2022 now, seeking to
dismantle Ukraine’s energy system -- this recent wave of attacks, what was novel
in these attacks was the intensive targeting of generation capacity, and we will
respond to that, as we talked about earlier, through the G7+ mechanism. And we
are going to continue, as I said, to give Ukraine the tools that it needs to
defend its own sovereign territory, including recognizing that Putin, as the
NATO secretary general put it memorably, has tried to weaponize the winter, and
we want to ensure that that weapon is unsuccessful.
MODERATOR: Next we’ll go to Alex Raufoglu
online. Please unmute yourself, Alex.
QUESTION: Zinaida, thank you so much for doing this, and Assistant Secretary,
thank you so much for your time. This is Alex Raufoglu. I am from Turan News
Agency. I have two quick questions and one follow-up. The question was asked
about this Russian energy infrastructure. I get the line that the U.S. -- it’s a
familiar line that the U.S. does not encourage Ukraine to fight back in Russia,
but are there any constraints placed upon Ukraine in how Ukraine defends itself,
whether it needs or not to take the fight back to Russia? I mean, Russian energy
is a main source of fighting and funding the war. What do you expect Ukraine to
do if not fight back by targeting the energy infrastructure?
And second question, is it too early to declare the total victory over Putin’s
efforts to weaponize the winter and energy? You -- Assistant Secretary, you said
that they have failed, but there are reports also out there about Russian
efforts to skirt the sanctions, so I want to get your comments on that.
And finally, if I may, you -- as I understand, you recently met with Azerbaijan’s
deputy energy minister, who oversees
COP29 efforts, and you said you’re looking
forward to keeping up
COP28 momentum this fall in Baku. Can you please elaborate
on that? Any particular deliverable you are looking forward to seeing? Thank you
so much.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: Sure. Thank you for both of those questions. Let me
just -- on Ukraine, what I want to emphasize is this war has been a
catastrophic
strategic failure for the Kremlin, for Vladimir Putin, one of the world’s great
examples of self-harm. Ukraine today is more united as a country than it has
ever been before in its independent history. Ukraine has a clear pathway to
membership in the European Union. NATO is stronger and larger than it was before
Putin began this tragic invasion. Russia has lost Europe as an energy market,
and Europe will never again view Russia as a reliable energy supplier. The
Ukrainian economy has fundamentally reoriented itself towards the West.
And so you ask is it too early to declare Ukraine’s victory. It’s too early to
declare Ukraine’s victory as long as these terrible Russian attacks continue,
Ukrainian civilians killed every single day by cruise missiles and attacks on
apartment buildings and destructions of schools and hospitals. But I am quite
confident, having spent more than a decade watching this issue now, that this
war will be recorded by history as an extraordinary strategic failure for
Vladimir Putin.
And then you asked about COP29, and you are correct, I had very good discussions
in Houston with the deputy energy minister. I also had excellent discussions a
few weeks ago when the energy minister himself was here in Washington. I
underlined the United States very strong support to the Azeri presidency of
COP29.
I also met in Houston with the Emiratis, and I emphasized how supportive we are
of the Troika mechanism that UAE, Azerbaijan, and Brazil have developed to
manage the agenda for COP28.
You asked about deliverables, and let me emphasize the issues that I’m
responsible for, and I’m not going to speak to the UN climate negotiations and
the things that my colleagues Rick Duke and Sue Biniaz in
SPEC [Special Presidential Envoy for Climate] are responsible
for. My focus is on the issues around the greening of our energy system, working
to ensure that the fossil energy that the world is going to continue to use is
delivered in the least climate-damaging way possible, which means sustaining our
efforts on methane abatement -- we are very, very supportive of the announcement
that President Aliyev made in terms of Azerbaijan’s adherence to the
Global
Methane Pledge, and we’re working now with companies like BP and Chevron and
Exxon Mobile that are active in the Caspian region to look at opportunities to
capture more of the methane and associated gases that have come from the
countries that have recently signed the Global Methane Pledge in the region, so
Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.
We are also very interested in continuing the work that Dr. Sultan Al Jaber did
so effectively at COP28 to bring along the global energy companies, the national
oil companies. I also met in Houston with, for instance, the CEO of
NNPC
[Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation] in
Nigeria. And on a lot of these issues of decarbonization, methane abatement,
carbon sequestration, the greatest part of the work has to be done with the
national oil companies. And so the work that UAE did in that regard was most
welcome.
Had a number of conversations in Houston with my DOE [(U.S.) Department of
Energy] colleague Brad Crabtree
from the
Office of Fossil Energy. Assistant Secretary Crabtree and I have been
centrally involved in work around the oil and gas decarbonization effort, the
contributions that many of our American oil and energy companies have made to
the UN -- excuse me -- the World Bank fund for methane abatement, leveraging that
opportunity as well. So we have a very deep agenda of priorities for COP29, and
I think based on my conversations with the COP president at Houston, I’m
confident that there’s a strong degree of alignment between the goals that
President Aliyev set and the goals that the United States is going to bring to
that -- the next COP and then also as we head towards Brazil in 2025.
MODERATOR: We have time for one more
question. Sergey.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.] Sergey Yumatov from Russian TASS news agency. So you
mentioned the price cap on Russian oil. My question is: Are there ongoing
discussions within the G7 on further lowering the price cap, and [inaudible] the
G7 consider any additional steps in this regard? Thank you.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: Yes. The short answer is yes. We are committed to
working with our price cap coalition to deny Russia the resources that it uses
to prosecute this terrible war against the people of Ukraine. So you have seen
the steps that we have taken as part of the price cap coalition to step up
enforcement, including of the attestation by shipping companies. You have seen
the sanctions that we have leveled against ships and shipping companies that
have found to be skirting those requirements.
You’ve also seen the work that we are undertaking to systematically target
projects which are focused on Russia’s future energy production capacity -- so,
for instance, the sanctions against
Novatek, against the Arctic LNG 2 project,
which are clearly having an effect based on the complaints that have come from
Moscow about those sanctions actions.
You’re also seeing a systematic effort to go after shipping. You’ve seen the
recent sanctions that we have leveled against
Sovcomflot and a number of
Sovcomflot vessels. There will be more -- I promise you that -- as we seek to
tighten the sanctions regime around Russia. I’m not going to preview specific
sanctions actions, but what I am here to tell you is that we are committed to
the forceful implementation of those sanctions measures.
Significantly also an issue that we have talked about in the context of the
US-EU
Energy Council -- and which I think is mentioned in the very good
joint statement from the Energy Council -- is
the question of Russian nuclear fuel and services, where we as the G7 are
committed to phasing out our dependence and where Congress took important steps
last week to implement what Secretary Granholm
talked about in her testimony before Congress last week as well, which is an
eventual ban on the import of Russian nuclear fuel into the United States and
the regeneration of our fuel industry domestically here in the U.S. to propel
our own growth of our nuclear industry and to decouple from Russian supplies
just as Europe has succeeded in decoupling from Russian gas, coal, and oil.
MODERATOR: Thank you. This concludes the Q&A
session. I will now turn it over to our briefer for any last thoughts.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: No, well, thank you very much. Again, I really
appreciate the opportunity to be with the FPC [Foreign Press Center] today. I would also emphasize -- as
I did at the top -- just how central these issues have become to so many of our
bilateral relationships. We talked a little bit about Türkiye. I also joined
Secretary Blinken yesterday with the Kazakh foreign minister, and I will see
Deputy Foreign Minister Kairat Umarov later today to talk about another issue
that affects the interests of Türkiye, which is our support for Caspian energy
diversification as well.
But this has really become a defining aspect of our bilateral relationships
around the world, whether it’s how we work with Europe, how we work with our
partners in Ukraine, how we work with the developing world on the issues around
critical minerals -- and we haven’t talked today about Latin America, haven’t
talked so much about Sub-Saharan Africa, but this too remains a very high
priority.
And then finally Asia. We’re looking ahead soon to welcoming Japanese Prime
Minister Kishida. I was with the Korean ambassador yesterday looking ahead to
the U.S.-EU-Korean energy security dialogue [correction: It is the U.S.-Korea
energy security dialogue], which will take place in Houston at the end of next
month, at the end of April. But what you see is a systematic effort to leverage
America’s energy abundance, to advance our national security, but also to
reinforce the security of our allies and friends around the world.
MODERATOR: I would like to give special
thanks to both our briefer for sharing his time with us today and to all the
journalists who participated. This concludes today’s briefing. Thank you.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT: Thank you very
much.
1Illustrative quotation: Greek LNG import capacity and regassification capacity remains absolutely vital for the region and
forms the basis for the next visionary project in the region’s energy
development — the Vertical Corridor. Using existing infrastructure from
Greece up to Ukraine, the Vertical Corridor will allow LNG imported
through Greece to fill the vast storage tanks in Ukraine, providing a
new source of gas for Central Europe and the Western Balkans, and
helping to reduce price volatility along the way. It will also be
crucial in supporting the EU’s intention to fully decouple from Russian
gas by 2027." [Source: https://www.state.gov/remarks-to-the-east-macedonia-and-thrace-forum/]
2 Relevant exchange:
" Q Thanks, Karine. Hey,
John, there’s a report that the U.S. is urging Ukraine to stop attacks
on Russia’s energy infrastructure out of fear that it’s going to drive
up oil prices.
MR. KIRBY: Yeah.
Q Can you confirm those conversations are happening?
MR. KIRBY: I’m not going to speak to the specifics in that press
reporting. The only thing I would tell you is what I’ve said before: We
do not encourage or enable the Ukrainian military to conduct strikes
inside Russia.
Q But are you concerned about this at all, that these attacks are
happening against their energy infrastructure?
MR. KIRBY: We do not encourage or enable Ukraine to strike inside
Russia."
