Rick Perry: We aim for energy domination
Washington Examiner
Salena Zito
July 17, 2017
"A day after Secretary of Energy Rick Perry toured a coal-fired power plant in northern West Virginia, the former Texas governor sat down with the Washington Examiner at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in suburban Pittsburgh.
"The facility is one of 17 government-funded national labs within the Department of Energy and is also part of a fascinating chapter in American history, not just in the development of energy, but also of science. The complex, atop a rolling Appalachian ridge, once housed the head of the Ordnance Engineering Group for the Manhattan Project and the researchers and scientists who helped design the trigger for the first atomic bomb.
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"Sitting in a conference room overlooking the lush 38-acre Energy Department facility, the secretary discussed the Trump administration's ambitions for energy policy, his responsibilities and approach to the office, and what he hopes to accomplish by the time he leaves office.
"Washington Examiner: What is the scope of your job as you see it?
"Perry: Well, it's an interesting agency in the sense of part of what they do, the general public only has a passing knowledge of. All the nuclear weapon arsenal is under the purview of the Department of Energy. So, making sure that it's safe, secure. Making sure that it works. God forbid that we ever have to use it, but if we do, we want to know it's going to work.
"Washington Examiner: How do you ensure that it is functional?
"Perry: With the prohibition against underground testing, that means that super-computing becomes very important in running the models with our computers. One of the things I will discuss today with the employees is our goals — modernizing the weapons arsenal and making sure that we modernize it appropriately.
"Then the cleanup of the Cold War, the legacy of the Cold War. There are a lot of places around the country where we did work — Hanford, up in the Pacific Northwest, for instance, Oak Ridge, Rocky Flats in Colorado, Paducah in Kentucky. It's going to be a long process in some of the places. That's two-thirds of our budget there. The 17 national labs, one of which we are in now, the National Energy Technology Lab. It's a unique one in the sense of it's the only one that's actually government-run and government-operated. The other ones are what we call MNO, where there's a contractor that comes in and operates it. Those other 16 labs are run by private-sector organizations. And it is just mind-boggling work that they do. Everything from finding the next safe, thoughtful way to use a type of energy. For instance, right here in this one in Pittsburgh, how do you use coal in a way that will continue to support the coal industry, support the jobs and the livelihood and the way of life that coal has been involved with?
"So, those are the types of things that this facility, and the one down in Morgantown, W.Va., that we are working together to come up with the new technologies to use coal, fossil fuels, in a thoughtful way.
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"Washington Examiner: Shell is building a cracker plant not far from here. Is that part of the equation of creating an energy hub in this region? Explain what a cracker plant is, because when people who are not from an energy state hear 'cracker plants,' they think it's a plant that makes saltines.
"Perry: (laughing) Well, this is cracking those molecules so that you can have different byproducts — ethane, ethylene — that go into the petrochemical industry, and yes, that is adding value. That is creating a hub. If you just took that gas and burned it at a power plant, it's sort of like cooking your breakfast using $100 bills. It will cook your breakfast, but it's a pretty expensive way to do it.
"But if you take that gas, process it, crack it, send different streams different ways to be used in a lot of valued-added processing, that can happen right here in this region. So, one job becomes 10 jobs. And those are high-value jobs.
"The other side of what it does, President Trump's vision of making America dominant in the energy field — this is exactly what he's talking about. He doesn't want us just to be independent. He wants us to be dominant. That means that our allies, wherever they may be in the world, know that there will be a constant stream of these products that they need to develop their countries economically.
"All of our allies are very interested in our being able to develop different energy sources, LNG in particular. I mean, this is a game changer.
"Right here in Pittsburgh, you're sitting on top of this extraordinary resource that can be — and will be, from my perspective — a renaissance in America economically, bringing America to a place that 15 years ago, there were a lot of people that said we're done from an energy standpoint.
"I'm always intrigued when someone says, ‘The science is settled.' You know, whether they're talking about the issue of global warming, or whether it's the issue of our energy resources, maybe the science isn't settled. It may be settled in somebody's mind, but it hasn't been settled in a lot of innovators' minds, and that's the reason that I hold out hope that, you know, in some national lab, maybe in a university lab, maybe in a private-sector lab — I don't know — that there's technology that is going to allow us to use our coal, for instance, in an even more efficient and environmentally sensitive way than we are today.
"I was just outside of Houston at a petro plant, and it's carbon capture, utilization, sequestration. There was a retrofit of an old coal burning plant. They're capturing the emissions, the CO2 emissions, compressing them and then shipping them, via pipeline, 80 miles to an oil field outside of Victoria, Texas, and it's then injected into the ground to help with the enhanced oil recovery.
"I mean, the oil field is going from like 500 barrels a day to 1,500 barrels a day, because they get the pressure to push the oil up. The plant takes over 90 percent of all the CO2. That's not to mention what these national labs have found.
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"Washington Examiner: Have you had a chance to have conversations with any of the miners in West Virginia or Kentucky or in Pennsylvania?
"Perry: I did, both in Pennsylvania and in West Virginia. Five years ago, these were people who were either losing hope or who had lost hope that the coal industry was ever going to be again a viable part of the American energy portfolio. Today, watching what President Trump has done, that he's lived up to his campaign promises, they opened a new coal plant in Pennsylvania. He has talked to the president of Ukraine, President Poroshenko, about selling U.S. coal. He talked to [Indian] Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi about American coal, American LNG — liquefied natural gas — being sold to that country. Japan is in the market for LNG. I would suspect there were conversations in Poland about American energy resources, both coal and LNG. You've got an administration and a Cabinet, a secretary of energy, that is very pro-coal, pro-American energy.
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"I happen to think that Donald Trump is about shaking up, if you will, going outside the norms of what we've historically seen. I think he's going to be very successful. He's already turned point on a deer. I'm sure that's made some people very uncomfortable. But Americans, by and large, like the idea of pushing the power out of Washington, D.C., back to the states, back to the local level in a lot of ways, and asking people to come onboard who have been very successful in, well, I should say, been very successful outside of Washington, D.C."
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