HomeRemarks and Releases – Asia Pacific Media Hub...Digital Press Briefing with Geoffrey R. Pyatt, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Energy Resources

# 									Digital Press Briefing with Geoffrey R. Pyatt, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Energy Resources							

Special Briefing

Geoffrey R. Pyatt, Assistant SecretaryBureau of Energy Resources

May 2, 2024

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https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/A_S-Pyatt-briefing-audio.m4a

**MODERATOR:** Greetings from the U.S. Department of State’s Asia Pacific Media Hub. I would like to welcome journalists to today’s on-the-record briefing with Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Energy Resources Geoffrey R. Pyatt.

Assistant Secretary Pyatt will provide an overview of the 10th United States-Republic of Korea Energy Security Dialogue, hosted in Houston at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy on April 30th and May 1st. He will discuss how the dialogue advances increased U.S. and ROK collaboration on energy security and the clean energy transition, including on decarbonization efforts and clean energy cooperation, critical mineral supply chains and the role of the private sector in combating climate change. Additionally, he will discuss urgently needed support for Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the wake of escalation in Russian attacks as well as Indo-Pacific regional energy cooperation.

With that, let’s get started. Assistant Secretary Pyatt, thank you for joining us. I’ll turn it over to you for your opening comments. Let’s see. Ambassador Pyatt, we can’t hear you. Ambassador Pyatt, I think you might be on mute.

**ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT:** I don’t – can you hear me now?

**MODERATOR:** Oh, now we can hear you. Now we can hear you.

**ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT:** Great. I’m sorry. Somehow, I was having trouble. I was about to switch over to my phone. Great, thank you. Sorry for the technical interruption there. Good morning, everybody, and thanks very much for doing this. Let me start with a couple of framing questions and then really happy to take the conversation in whatever direction is useful to everybody.

And let me start by noting we made the point that this was the 10th U.S.-Korea Energy Security Dialogue, but in fact I would argue that this was new and noteworthy in a couple of regards. First of all, for the very first time we had both – we had both MOFA and MOTI together just as we had State and DOE on the U.S. Government side. Importantly, this was the first time we had ever done a dialogue like this in Houston, the United States energy capital. And I’ll come back in a minute to why that was so useful and valuable I think for both sides.

And then finally, and I think really important as well, we had a significant track 1.5 element to the conversation, so that on Tuesday, after our government-to-government session, we had another session that involved both Korean and American companies participating actively. And I think that was really helpful and served to reinforce for everybody, as Deputy Minister Kim put it in his remarks, that our dialogue and what we do with the government-to-government level is really only relevant to the extent it facilitates the deepening of the very important trade and investment ties between American and Korean businesses in the energy security and clean tech areas.

I mentioned that we were in Houston and why I thought that was so useful, and I think it’s important to remember that Houston, I mean, it really is America’s energy capital. And of course that meant we talked a lot about LNG, the critically important role that American gas producers have played in reinforcing Korea’s energy security amid a global gas market severely disrupted by Russia’s actions, and a very large, very large customer among all of the United States’ global partners on LNG. But Houston has also become a major center for clean energy finance, and we had a fascinating discussion – the U.S. and Korea with companies, both American and Korean, that are involved in investment in everything from clean hydrogen to carbon sequestration to next-generation solar technologies. And we had a lot of conversations with companies that are involved in clean tech spaces and clean tech supply chains on everything from solar to batteries to critical minerals to clean hydrogen and geothermal.

I want to spend a minute in particular on those – on three really, really important areas of U.S.-Korea clean energy cooperation.

**MODERATOR:** Oh, Assistant Secretary Pyatt, you seem to have cut out for a moment.

**ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT:** (Inaudible) in addition, we have had a very, very close dialogue between the United States and Korea focused on specifically the steps that we can take to deepen opportunities for the world-leading role that Korean companies play at home but also here in the United States, in helping us to secure a supply chain for critically energy – critical energy storage systems, batteries that are not dependent on Chinese sourcing. So, and of course Korea has been one of the most active international partners in terms of leveraging opportunities in the United States under our Inflation Reduction Act, but also growing the global supply chain of these key building blocks of the clean energy transition.

Second, I would flag everything around solar supply chains. There are of course billions of dollars that Korean companies have invested here in the United States to help us develop a secure solar supply chain – again, not dependent on Chinese inputs.

Third: offshore wind. This is of course a major focus for the Biden administration here at home, with a target of 30 gigawatts of capacity by the end of the decade. Korea has tremendous, tremendous potential in its own offshore waters for offshore wind power. It also has a strong maritime and shipbuilding tradition, and it has the big industrial groups that can mobilize the capital necessary to play a significant role in offshore wind.

So we see this as a fantastic area for potential growth in U.S.-Korea cooperation, and then there’s clean hydrogen. Texas in many ways is ground zero for the American clean hydrogen industry – significant new investments for green hydrogen, for blue hydrogen based on carbon sequestration and storage. So we had lots and lots of discussion about how the clean hydrogen industry is likely to evolve. Korea will be one of the off-takers for some of that investment in the United States clean hydrogen industry, but it also has great aspirations for its own clean hydrogen future. And in this regard we talked about the critically important role that hydrogen is likely to play as we look out to the future, especially for the decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors requiring high-temperature applications like steel, certain chemicals, concrete, but also for maritime.

So lots of very important conversations there. We had opportunities to engage with all of the major U.S. players in the areas of LNG and gas, emphasizing the United States role as a reliable supplier and the expectation that that role is only going to grow in the years ahead, but also to hear from some of our supermajors that are making significant investments here in the United States in technologies around methane abatement, carbon sequestration, looking to reduce the carbon footprint and climate impact of the fossil energy that we continue to use.

Also had some very interesting conversations, and here I’ll finish up, around how the U.S. and Korea work together – for instance, elsewhere in Southeast Asia, across the Indo-Pacific – to accelerate the clean energy transition, build commercial opportunities. And in this regard, I would just finish by turning back to something that President Yoon emphasized in his visit to the United States last summer, which is Korea’s own expanding strategic horizons and the critically important role of the U.S.-Korea alliance in that regard. My role is to try to develop the energy and energy security pillar of that overall alliance, and I came away from our discussions in Houston really inspired to see how far and how fast we’re developing our cooperation across all of the dimensions that I just talked about; the tremendous possibilities as we look to the future; but also the very strong convergence of perspectives between our two governments at a very senior political level, but also at the operational level and the way our companies are working together, the way our officials are working together, the way our laboratories and scientists are working together.

So it’s a terrific, terrific dialogue, very rich content, and happy to take questions on that or anything else that’s of interest to the folks who are dialing in this morning.

**MODERATOR:** Thank you so much, Assistant Secretary. We will now turn to the question-and-answer portion of today’s briefing. To kick us off, Assistant Secretary, could you tell us a little bit more about the engagements you had with the ROK in the lead-up to this dialogue and how the dialogue came about?

**ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT:** Sure. So of course, I was in Seoul a little more than a year ago for the ninth round of the dialogue. That was really well timed because it came just before the White House visit. So, it was a terrific opportunity to have some very – President Yoon’s visit to the White House was an opportunity to really measure the scope for further cooperation between us.

One of the things that we concluded at that dialogue in Seoul a year ago was that it would be really valuable given all the Korean companies are doing in the United States and American companies have been doing for decades in Korea to bring in a private sector component. So we began to work on that from the beginning.

Back in March, I met with Ambassador Cho to talk a little more about the Energy Security Dialogue, to talk about some of the priorities that I have been working on globally in my ENR role, a lot of which I’ve already talked about. I would also flag in this context our ongoing work with Korea on the critical issues around Ukraine, where especially in light of Russia’s recent attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, Korean companies, Korean heavy manufacturers are playing a critical role in supplying the auto transformers and other equipment needed to keep the lights on in Ukraine, on top of the contributions that Korea is making as a donor in Ukraine and more recently as a member of the multi-donor coordination platform operating under the G7 and as part of the G7+ energy support group that I lead for the White House.

So we had a good series of discussions with the Korean embassy to try to sharpen up our agenda on all of those international issues, but also critically on the topics that I talked about in the broader bilateral energy sphere where we see so much opportunity to deepen the U.S.-Korea alliance and really develop even further energy as one of the strongest pillars of our overall relationship.

**MODERATOR:** Thank you. Our next question comes from Albert Lee from Korea Pro, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Albert asks: “Russian energy exports to ROK have been cited as a reason for limiting the scale of ROK military support to Ukraine. What progress has been made in facilitating the replacement of Russian coal supplied to ROK?”

**ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT:** So I would flag a couple of things. First of all, it’s notable that Korea has already gone to zero on certain key possible energy imports from Russia, like naphtha. And Korea has also substantially reduced its imports of Russian liquefied natural gas, down by about half compared to what they were before the full-scale invasion began.

We talked a lot in the Energy Security Dialogue about the readiness and enthusiasm of American gas producers to further grow their supplies to Korea in order to fill in behind that Russian supply. I also talk quite a bit about the systematic work that the United States is engaged in, some of which I have led, in order to reduce Russia’s future energy exports and energy revenue, including in the LNG space, where folks would have seen that just yesterday we had additional sanctions against some of the companies, including the shippers, that have facilitated Novatek’s flagship LNG project, Arctic LNG 2.

I think on the question of coal, it’s less a matter of phasing out of Russia than phasing out of coal writ large. This is a goal which the Korean Government shares. The United States has made clear, working with all our industrial country partners, that every country will have to manage this transition out of coal in a way that is sustainable, that is supportable in our democracies, and in a way that doesn’t disrupt overall energy security. But we had a lot of good discussion with our Korean allies about the opportunities that we see for Korea to further phase out of coal, shutting down its legacy coal plants and replacing that capacity with expanded renewables and all of the potential we see for additional work in areas like offshore wind as well as new technologies like clean hydrogen and, of course, traditional LNG.

So this is not an area of tension between the United States and Korea. To the contrary, I think I find my Korean interlocutors not just in Houston this week, but generally, very, very attentive to the enormous threat that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – this brutal and unprovoked invasion, the threat that that poses to our international system. And of course in the case of Korea, an area of particular concern is the deep and intensifying security partnership between Russia and North Korea in pursuit of this illegal invasion, including the transfer of North Korean ballistic missiles, which are being used by Russia to destroy civilian targets inside Ukraine.

So this is an area where there’s a strong convergence. As I said, ROK has now joined our multi-donor coordination platform writ large on Ukraine, and has been a – has played a critically important role on the Ukraine energy issues that I’ve been responsible for, and we had these issues around Russia and Ukraine as very explicit topics of discussion under the umbrella of our Energy Security Dialogue.

**MODERATOR:** Thank you. Our next question comes from Benedikta Miranti from Liputan6.com in Jakarta, Indonesia, who asks: “Could you elaborate more about how the collaboration between the U.S. and ROK could bring an impact to the Indo-Pacific region?”

**ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT:** Sure. Well, again, let me start with something I think I said in my opening remarks, and if I wasn’t clear about it, I should have been. Korea is an exceptionally important partner on everything around the energy transition because of the very large role that Korea is playing globally on clean energy supply chains, because of the innovative role that Korean companies are playing, especially in the area of energy storage and batteries, which of course is a key component of the EV ecosystem but also is vitally important as we think about how to handle energy storage to support the transition to variable renewable-based sources like wind and solar.

So Korea plays an enormously important role here domestically in the United States through the investments that are being made by Korean companies under the umbrella of the Inflation Reduction Act, but also across the wider region because of the investments that Korea is making, because of the goods that Korean firms provide to power the clean energy transition across the Indo-Pacific region. And as I alluded to, the real leadership role that Korea has exercised in the area of critical minerals supply chains, where Korea has been one of the most active participants in our Minerals Security Partnership, where Korea has been – has taken the lead on several specific MSP projects and where Korea is poised to do even more, both in terms of mobilizing and bringing to market non-Chinese supply chains for the key energy minerals that we need to power our energy transition. But also because of the leadership that Korea is exercising through its investment and financial arms, just as the United States is trying to mobilize our Development Finance Corporation, Export-Import Bank, TDA, and other instruments of the U.S. Government to deliver what Secretary Blinken calls a better offer to the countries of the developing world that are in possession of these mineral resources and are trying to figure out how to develop them in a way that delivers benefits for their citizens, as one would expect, but also meets the higher ESGs that countries like the United States and Korea practice day to day.

**MODERATOR:** All right. Next, we have a question in the live queue from a guest from Yonhap News Agency. You should be able to speak, and if you could introduce yourself, please.

Let’s see. Our guest who raised their hand, you should be able to unmute yourself now. Okay, maybe we’ll move on then to a question from Jiyeon Kim at Yonhap News Agency: “In terms of reducing dependency on China, is there any possibility that this energy dialogue between ROK and the U.S. broaden to include other partners as well, such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, et cetera?”

**ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT:** So that’s a really good and important question, and I was recently in Canberra for our U.S.-Australia Energy Security Dialogue. We actually hosted our Japanese allies in California last October for what was only the second iteration of the U.S.-Japan Energy Security Dialogue.

We had some good conversations in Houston about specific geographies where there are possibilities for us to do more working jointly with other partners, and of course the MSP embracing 14 countries in the EU, 15 parties altogether, is the ultimate manifestation of that multilateral cooperation.

I think there’s a possibility for us to do more, especially in the North Asia context, leveraging what the United States has strongly supported in terms of the deeper cooperation between Japan, Korea, and the United States. And many of the issues in the two dialogues are similar, especially because both Japan and Korea are treaty allies of the United States, important markets for U.S. energy exports, and important investors and innovators in the clean energy transition. But the relationships are also different, and so I think we’ve got more work to do if we want to develop those opportunities for multilateral cooperation.

My yardstick is always, does that multilateral approach deliver more value than working with just the strict bilateral channel? That is to say, we shouldn’t be pursuing multilateralism for the sake of multilateralism. I think in the area of energy there are certainly some areas where I could imagine the U.S.-Japan-Korea relationship meeting that test, but that’s going to require more work by all of us and we’re not quite there yet. But this is very much something that’s on the agenda as we look for the future, and in the meantime, I come out of Houston really determined to lean in even further to the U.S.-Korea bilateral partnership because there is so much that I see that we’ll be able to do together.

**MODERATOR:** We have another question from Albert Lee of Korea Pro. “Did the recent discussions touch on the dispute between Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power and Westinghouse over the re-export of Westinghouse’s licensed nuclear reactor designs?”

**ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT:** So not directly, but indirectly. And let me explain why. We were joined in Houston by one of my colleagues from the nonproliferation bureau at the State Department that works on these issues. I also had as part of my delegation one of our directors from the Department of Energy.The Energy Security Dialogue was not the place to negotiate the ongoing commercial dispute between Westinghouse and team Korea. But it was a great opportunity to talk about the tremendous prospects that we see for the future in civil nuclear cooperation between the United States and Korea, especially in the area of small and modular reactors where Korean companies are already investment partners with some of the key project promoters in the United States, and where Korean industry has a fantastic potential to play a leading role in the development of this next generation of civil nuclear technology.

There was a lot of talk in our private sector conversations and our discussion with venture capital clean tech investors about the absolutely critical role that SMR technology is likely to play in meeting our climate targets in the years ahead, especially in the decarbonization of big industrial off-takers, including data centers, which everybody in Houston was talking about. And the linkage to the commercial dispute that the questioner asked about is the understanding, I think on all sides, that until we get this commercial dispute resolved, it’s going to be impossible for us to move ahead as fast or as far as we would like on the broader civil nuclear cooperation that has SMR opportunities at its heart.

So as – to finish where I started on this, the Energy Security Dialogue was not the venue to negotiate the broader civil nuclear issues, but it was a great venue to talk about the fantastic prospects we see for the future if we can just find our way through the immediate commercial dispute.

**MODERATOR:** Thank you. And now, Assistant Secretary Pyatt, if you have any last words for us, I’ll turn it back over to you.

**ASSISTANT SECRETARY PYATT:** Yeah, thank you. So again, I apologize that I missed a couple of seconds there at the beginning, but I think I covered all of the issues that were flagged up front. What I would just emphasize and really put a double line underneath is the very high quality of the conversations that we were engaged in in Houston and the unique aspect of bringing in our companies and the private sector, which I think really reflects what sets apart the U.S.-Korea energy relationship, which is the leading role that our companies are playing on both sides of the Pacific but also on both sides of the energy agenda that I’m responsible for, both traditional energy and products like LNG, but also all of the clean tech areas that we discussed.

Our job, as Deputy Minister Kim put it, is to make sure that we in government are doing everything we can to unlock the potential for that private sector cooperation. We agreed in Houston that this new format with a prominent role for the private sector is exactly what we need to drive forward our bilateral energy relationship, and we’re going to continue this on an ongoing basis, including for the 11th round of the dialogue that will take place next year in Korea.

So very grateful to our Korean partners from both government and private sector who were part of the discussions in Houston. I’m very excited about the opportunity we have to build on Houston in the weeks and months ahead.

**MODERATOR:** Well, that brings us to the end of our time for today. Thank you for your questions, and huge thanks to Assistant Secretary Pyatt for joining us today. We will provide a transcript of this briefing to participating journalists as soon as it’s available, and we’d also love to hear your feedback. You can contact us at any time at AsiaPacMedia@state.gov. Thanks again for your participation, and we hope you can join us for another briefing soon.

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