Energy Secretary Wright Speaks at Golden Pass LNG Site in Texas

I'd like to invite the United States Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, to the podium. Secretary Wright knows energy, he knows our industry, and he knows what contribution it makes. His move from the private sector to public service has been invaluable to our country. His industry insight is widely recognized and admired, and he's backed by an administration that understands our business. And we're incredibly fortunate to have his leadership. Secretary Wright. Thank you. So I have a message, a message from President Trump. I spoke to him right before he left for China, and he said, when you're down there, tell everyone thank you. Tell them not a little thank you, tell them a huge thank you. You, and what you do every day, is transforming our country, transforming the economy and the security of our country, and ultimately you're transforming the world. There is no one who goes to work every day and has a bigger impact on the 8 billion people who live on this planet than you in this tent. And from President Trump, from me, from the American people, and from the world, God bless you and thank you. Thank you. I think Alex runs Golden Pass, passionate about energy, lifelong in the energy business. Dan, we're not going to hold it against him that he came to the energy business later, because in fact he was always in the energy business. He was in the energy consumption business, making a key implement in automobiles that make our modern world possible, and now he's on the energy supply business. When you look at world history, and I love history, and I love looking back at the incredible achievements of humans through society and through our advancements, I'm incredibly proud of the American Revolution. People who were bold and courageous risked everything to create a different nation, a free nation, a strong and proud nation. They were bold and they swam against the stream. Probably many over the last years have said the same about you, swimming against the stream. This oil and gas industry is going away. We're not going to need it anymore. You guys are somehow ruining the planet. It's crazy the fever pitch this discussion went to. But, of course, as you probably already know and have always known in your hearts, it's just complete nonsense. It's complete nonsense. And this is coming from a kid. I went to college to work on nuclear energy. I worked on solar energy in graduate school. I worked in geothermal energy after that. I just love energy. I don't care where it comes from. As long as it makes our lives better and makes our nation more secure and brings better jobs and opportunities for ourselves and our kids and our grandkids, that's all I care about. But the fact is our country and the world run on oil and gas. They did the day I was born. They do today, and I guarantee they will the day I die. And I'm planning on that to be a long time from now. A long time from now. To put some numbers on that, the United States today, 75 percent of the total energy we consume, 75 percent comes from two things, oil and natural gas. You know, then you put in coal and hydro, and you're 90 percent, over 90 percent of American energy. That's what runs our country. I'm not downplaying anything else. There's things that can add and be helpful. That's great, too. But let's look at what matters. Oil, gas, top two by far. You know, and then coal and nuclear. But in the United States, 20 years ago, we were the largest importer of oil in the world. And we were the largest importer of natural gas in the world. And at that time, we were running over 1,000 drilling rigs. We're drilling for natural gas. We had a bunch of rigs drilling for oil, too. But we had even more rigs, much more rigs in the United States drilling for gas than for oil because gas was the fuel of the future. It was growing fast. Natural gas is the biggest source of our electricity. It's the biggest source of our home heating. It's the biggest source that powers our factories. It's the source of fertilizer, right? We use methane, that natural gas you're working with every day. We use that methane in a cool chemical process to create nitrogen fertilizer. If we just ended that one use of natural gas, global food production would drop by 50%. That would be a bad world, right? Does everybody want to cut their calories in half tomorrow? I don't. I'm going to have a huge dinner tonight because I'm so energized by being with you. So we need natural gas as our fastest-growing energy source on the planet. And the U.S. imported all the gas we could via pipeline from Canada. There was a ton of rigs drilling in Canada. This facility right here was built because we couldn't get enough gas from the United States and from Canada to power the future we wanted. So bold investors, Exxon and Cutter Energy, said, we're going to build a facility here to import natural gas from Cutter over to the United States so we can still have this future in front of us. And then a funny thing was going on in the background, the American Shell Revolution. It only happened in this country because in America you can take risks, you can take gambles, you can bet on yourself, and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. We dust ourselves off and we try something else. The Shell Revolution turned out to be this phenomenal success. So here we are today, here you all are here today, and when we were running 1,200 rigs drilling for natural gas 20 years ago, today we're running 120. Ninety percent decline in the rigs drilling for natural gas. Sounds like an industry that blew up, it collapsed. But what happened to natural gas production? It doubled, more than doubled. We are today the world's largest exporter of natural gas in the world by a fair margin, by a factor of two. And if you look out 10 years, we'll be the largest exporter of natural gas by a factor of three, maybe four. The future of global energy, the future of our country, always tied to energy, but no energy source on the planet is growing faster and is more important than natural gas. The most important industry is energy because that's what makes our lives possible, and you're in the most important piece of the most important, energy is the most important industry, and you're in the natural gas piece. Fastest growing, most dynamic piece. It's the fastest growing export of the United States of America. President Trump got elected because there was too much nonsense around energy. Oh, we're going to shut, we're going to close our coal plants and shut down the industries that power our country, and we're going to spend a ton of money on energy sources that again, to the extent they work, that's okay. But the globe spent $10 trillion on wind, solar, batteries, and transmission lines to support them. And today, they're a little bit less than 3%, 3% of global energy. In the United States, they're just over 3% of United States energy. Natural gas is 37% of United States energy. And in fact, you can't make wind turbines or solar panels without massive amounts of natural gas, coal, and oil. So, without what you do, like almost nothing happens in our world. And I'll also, I want to say, you're at the beginning of this. You're at the beginning of this. Thank you for being here to build this plant, but we're going to build a lot more. Because today, about a billion people live lifestyles like us. We get to wear these cool, fancy, in this case, sexy clothes made out of hydrocarbons, made with hydrocarbons. We got, you know, beautiful lighting and temperature-controlled rooms, and we go to work in buses and cars, and we fly on planes to visit our family. We have life expectancies that are more than twice as long as anyone in the world just a few generations ago. Pretty awesome. I wake up every morning and say, God bless oil, natural gas, and coal, and God bless the people who make it happen, because I wouldn't have the life I have today without that. But a billion people have these awesome, fully energized lives. Seven billion people around the planet. I have not met one of them that doesn't want what we have. They want life that we have. And the only way to get from where we are today to this where everybody lives much better lives is just massively more energy. There is no other way but massively more energy. Fortunately, the United States has the reserves of natural gas. We have the technology. We have the capital. We have awesome workers who can build giant facilities so that not just Americans benefit from our natural gas. The whole planet can benefit from United States natural gas. Everywhere I go around the world, people ask me about, are you going to keep growing LNG? We need more of it. We haven't built an import terminal yet. Should we build one? Are you guys going to be there for us? Yes, yes, and yes. We're going to be there because we have the United States people. We have workers in this industry. We have a president that is all in on American energy, American energy workers, and the future of this country. And I'll tell you the common sense, the lean in energy dominance attitude he brought to Washington, D.C., it is contagious. It is contagious. New England is a region of our country with very expensive energy, and it's starved for natural gas because politicians stood in the way and blocked a pipeline to bring more natural gas to New England. They all opposed it. We've had two meetings now, all six New England governors. Yes, we need more natural gas. Yes, we need that pipeline. Yes, we get it now. We get it now. Politics are always going to swing back and forth, but an appreciation of how important energy is, how important oil and natural gas are, we're not going to go back to the crazy town we lived in two, three, five, ten years ago. I don't know where we're going, but I know we're going to a world of more energy, more American jobs and opportunity, a more prosperous future for us, for our families, and for our country. And God bless you. God bless the United States of America. God bless President Trump's leadership. And God bless the future we can all bring for ourselves, for our children, for our grandchildren, and their children. I love you all, and I'm so thankful for what you do every day. Thank you.