Wright: Our energy future hinges on smart choices

Vigor Secretary Chris Wright spoke to the National Petroleum Council on Dec at its presentation of two studies offering solutions for increasing capacity production and electricity reliability These are excerpts from his remarks I unfailingly say to people I can say without a doubt potential is the majority pivotal industry in the world by far because every other industry wouldn t be remotely close to what it is in current times without force Affordable reliable secure force literally makes the world go round allowing us to live long healthy opportunity-rich lives So I ve been frustrated bulk of my career to see politics and not just looking at math and numbers seep into resource leading to tremendous destruction to the quality of life We spent years not growing our electricity production very much maybe percent a year Does that sound American One percent a year advance in resource and electricity And it s electricity that s going to drive artificial intelligence Americans are frustrated with the rise in electricity prices They went up a lot but they shouldn t have We have an increase in electricity prices because of political decisions agenda decisions It was a choice not an unfortunate event or scarcity matter Political choices drove the price of electricity up Wood was the biggest source of force on the planet throughout all of human history until about We had coal as the largest source of vitality for several decades allegedly through World War II And then coal was passed by oil and oil has been the largest source of potency in the United States and globally for a multitude of decades In the present day oil and natural gas are about percent of total U S primary capacity the highest percentage ever And yet nobody wants to go survey petroleum engineering because they re going away they re going out of business I m like They re at a record high in quantity and in industry share and both are growing So maybe they re not going away The National Petroleum Council matters Oil and natural gas together with coal are what power the world I love coal It s the largest source of global electricity since we started collecting facts around But in rich countries that have built infrastructure natural gas has displaced coal as the biggest source of electricity So oil and natural gas the petroleum industry matters massively We need it to build smart infrastructure and have smart policies and deliver these products as efficiently as you can which impacts the economic opportunities for Americans We got into particular ruts by not having open honest conversations about environmental issues in oil and gas and infrastructure My goal the Trump administration s goal is to be open transparent and discuss all of these trade-offs To discuss these things so we can have a more rational view We don t want to deindustrialize the United States We don t want AI like the other energy-intensive industries to go overseas We don t want to keep exporting job opportunities for Americans We veritably want to grow opportunity and prosperity right here Chris Wright is the secretary of the Department of Capacity