India offers huge opportunity for US energy sector: Rick Perry

Washington, June 26

India offers an “amazing opportunity” for US energy sector as it is a huge market for the American energy products, including clean coal technology, Energy Secretary Rick Perry has said.

Perry, who visited India in April this year as part of the Trump administration’s move to enhance bilateral energy cooperation, said he had “very good conversations” with his Indian counterpart on clean coal and carbon capture utilisation.

During the first meeting of the US-India Strategic Energy Partnership in April, the two countries decided to increase its cooperation in oil and gas, power, renewable energy and coal sectors.

“India offers an amazing opportunity for US energy,” Perry told reporters during a media round table on Monday.

In the last three years, he said, the export of US crude oil to India had increased from 300,000 barrels to eight million barrels and it is a huge market for the American energy products, including clean coal technology.

Appreciative of India’s effort to partner with the US on nuclear power, Perry said the US needed to take steps to have the latest technology and efficient methods to produce nuclear power.

“If we don’t keep our ability to be a player in a technological sense, whether it’s building reactors as Westinghouse Electric Co does or whether it’s the pipeline of young people moving into nuclear energy because they see a future there. If we were to lose our ability to be a player in the nuclear power business, it’s going to have a long-term impact,” he said.

It sends a short-term message to Saudi Arabia, with which the US is currently in the process of negotiating a 123 Agreement, he said.

“It sends a short-term message to the Indian leadership that America is really not committed to nuclear power, so why should we go into a partnership with them and it appears that they’re not even going to support their industry in the United States,” Perry explained.

So, this is a really important conversation to have, he noted.

“If we’re going to go sit down with India, if we’re going to sit down with Saudi Arabia, we’re going to have conversations about nuclear power going forward, yet we let our industry collapse for whatever reason, then it puts the future of nuclear power in the US in jeopardy,” Perry said in response to a question.

During the India visit, Perry had said that Westinghouse Electric Co is emerging out of bankruptcy and is capable of delivering the planned six nuclear reactors to India on time.

Civil nuclear cooperation has been a cornerstone of US-India relations. The 2016 deal, under which Westinghouse was to build six AP1000 reactors in Andhra Pradesh, was concluded after more than a decade of diplomatic efforts.

But it was in limbo after Westinghouse in March last year filed for bankruptcy following an estimated USD 13 billion of cost overruns at two US projects.

According to a Department of Energy Factsheet, the US is focused on promoting American LNG exports and increasing its energy dominance by supporting research and development in both the upstream and midstream sectors.

To date, the energy department has approved cumulative exports of liquefied natural gas of 21.35 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) to any country in the world not prohibited by US law or policy.

Since January 2017, the Department of Energy has granted non-FTA export authority to two world-scale LNG projects— Golden Pass Products in Texas and Delfin LNG, which is proposed for offshore Louisiana. 

It has also granted authority to Eagle LNG’s small-scale Maxville, Florida, project and approved additional capacity at the proposed Lake Charles, Louisiana and LNG project.

Cargos of US LNG have so far landed in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, South America, North America, the Caribbean—and also in Europe, in places that have traditionally depended on Russia for gas supplies, like Lithuania and Poland.

Now, US LNG is helping to diversify their gas supplies and shore up their energy security.

The countries that now receive US LNG are Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lithuania, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the UAE and the UK. PTI