Energy Secretary Rick Perry departs for India Friday with a robust agenda to convince the country’s leaders it’s a good idea to buy American energy and technology.
Perry plans to advance discussions on buying more U.S. liquefied natural gas exports, develop India’s energy distribution network by tapping U.S. pipeline companies to do the work, and invest in clean coal technologies that the U.S. is leading the way in developing.
Perry has discussed pieces of the agenda over the last five days, primarily in talking with lawmakers at a series of hearings. The trip looks to be a major energy trade meeting where key cooperative agreements are likely to be reached.
On Thursday, he told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that natural gas will be a big part of the talks, noting that the country’s largest gas utility signed a 20-year deal with U.S.-based Cheniere to buy LNG from its terminal on the Gulf Coast. The first shipments from that deal began arriving in India two weeks ago.
But he also wants to talk to India’s energy minister about improving its energy distribution network with pipeline and natural gas storage facilities, which he said India desperately needs. India has 300 million people without electricity, the largest population without power in the world.
“I think the issue for them is to build out their infrastructure to be able to move the gas around, not unlike … what we’ve got in this country,” Perry told the energy committee. “We’re way ahead of them, but the point is if you’re really going to be able to satisfy the economic needs, and satisfy the national security needs of your people, you’re going to have to have the distribution system as well.”
That’s another area where the U.S. can help the India grid through pipeline know-how and technology, Perry said. “I think there is a real opportunity” for U.S. pipeline companies in India and other countries looking to use more natural gas, he said.
“India is obviously a huge market” for U.S. energy companies, he said. “Our ability to deliver U.S. innovation, U.S. natural resources into that country are a great opportunity. That’s the real driving factor of why we’re headed that way.”
Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, vice chairman of the committee’s energy panel, returned from a trip to India last week as part of a congressional delegation. He spoke at a U.S.-India Forum event on a “Energy Cooperation — Prosperity through Partnership” panel.
“They were gushing, ‘Guess who’s coming in the next couple of days? Secretary Rick Perry,'” Olson relayed during the hearing. He said Prime Minister Nerendra Modi has an aggressive plan to clean up the country’s dirty air, which calls for a lot of wind and solar. But India also wants to use natural gas as a cleaner alternative to other fossil fuels such as coal, he said.
The Indian energy officials he met with said “over and over” that natural gas meets the “economy of the now,” while the “future is renewables,” Olson said.
The Indian government also relayed to Olson that to make the transition to more renewables, they will need more electricity and natural gas storage, better electricity transmission lines, and a whole host of other technologies that the U.S. is set up to provide. Olson said he wants Perry to take that message to them on his mission to India.
Perry also will be pitching U.S. clean coal technology. He told the Senate appropriations committee this week that the market is open for American carbon capture technology. He said India plans to use coal — the country has huge reserves of it — but the U.S. should be in the business of helping the country use it more cleanly.
“The technology we are seeing brought forward on clean coal, carbon capture, is starting to take off across the globe, and I think that is one of the most important things about this,” Perry told Senate appropriators Wednesday.
“We want it to be U.S.-based resources as often as possible, but we also want it to be as clean burning as it can be and that’s where [carbon capture] and the technology that is ongoing at these projects like you have in your home state and we are working on in our labs,” Perry said.
