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Washington, D.C. — Yesterday, Congresswoman Celeste Maloy (UT-02) questioned Energy Secretary Chris Wright on how the department is working with the administration, states, and local governments to produce more energy during a budget hearing with the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.

Maloy: I thank you for being here, Mr. Secretary. I represent Utah's Second District, which is most of the West desert in Utah, and that has some world class geothermal resources. And I was prepared to ask you a lot of questions about that. And then my colleague from Nevada mostly covered what I was going to ask, so I'm glad to hear that that's a priority. I'm glad to hear that you're planning on utilizing private investment to get some of these resources up and running. We do have some good research facilities where they're trying to take geothermal resources that we used to think weren't adequate and prove that they are. So, I hope you will support those efforts, and I also have several bills to help with the permitting process. So, I look forward to working with your team on that.

Wright: Fantastic. I look forward to working with you on that.

Maloy: And since we covered all of that, I'm going to get to two other questions that I was really hoping I would have time to ask. Given the importance of reducing our reliance on foreign countries for critical minerals, for fossil fuels, a lot of the inputs to energy, what are you doing at the cabinet level with the other secretaries to support domestic mining, oil and gas development, refining capabilities, so that we're not just talking concepts about how we could be producing energy, but we're moving towards producing more energy and more of the inputs to energy?

Wright: Oh, great question, great question, of course, and critical minerals and mining and processing and refining of minerals and materials in the United States is central to President Trump's agenda. You know, we've gotten ourselves, fortunately, most oil and gas developments on private land, and so in spite of withering federal opposition, it is sort of advanced, in spite of efforts at the federal government the last four years to strangle it. Mining is more difficult. You know, a lot of the resources for mining are on federal lands. And the US was a great giant, proud mining nation when I was born, and we've gone backwards that entire time. It's incredibly hard to permit a mine in the United States, and it's what got us in some of the tough situations that were mentioned earlier. There’s so many critical materials we don't produce any of in this country, and we can.

Maloy: I'm going to interrupt you just to make this point. What we've seen in the past sometimes is the Secretary of Energy says we want to be producing more of this, but the Secretary of Interior is working on a different agenda. And what I'm hoping we can avoid is having secretaries working at cross purposes, so you're saying what I want to hear, but then there's another secretary implementing policies, because we're producing energy on public land in my part of the country almost exclusively,

Wright: that is correct, yeah, and well aware of that, and it is a success for it because of local support in Utah that's driven that forward, but you had a bigger fight to make that happen than in other states where it's private lands. But that's why President Trump and Secretary Burgum led the effort to create the National Energy Dominance Council, and energy means critical minerals and materials and mining as well. But so that is, absolutely, and we talk about this every day. We have a list of mining projects that look like they're credible, that'll produce important stuff for our country, and we're trying to find out what is the barriers. And it's multiple agencies, what are all the things that have tripped them up, and how do we knock those down. And I think you're going to see this year, the first year of this administration, you will see a number of exciting announcements of mines fully permitted and shovels in the ground to get them going – mines that have been in process for over a decade are finally going to happen, but it is critical to our national security, not just to our economic well-being, but to our national security.

Maloy: Well, as the daughter of a miner, I'm really glad to hear that and that leads to my other question. I hope you can answer quickly in the time I have left. How are you working with state and local elected officials to make sure the plans you're making work for regional plans, and that everybody's engaged, so that we don't have the federal government saying they're going to do something that then local governments don't have buy in?

Wright: No, you're so right. We have a great federal system in this country. I have talked to more Democratic governors in the last 100 days than in my entire life combined. And great conversations. It's amazing how embracing so many Democratic governors are. They've seen that high price of energy and jobs not in their states anymore, and they want to see activity go ahead. A couple there's more contentious negotiating going on, but for the most part, it's been a welcoming environment. But you're right. It's not just federal. We need state, we need local communities and towns into it, which is why I'm very outspoken on this stuff. This is in America's best interest. It's in the planet's environmental interest as well as economic interests for us to start building things in America again.

Maloy: Well, I was just at breakfast with the Speaker of the Utah House of Representatives, and he would be mad at me if I didn't reiterate what he keeps saying which is anytime you need to a pilot project and have a proof of concept, Utah's willing to move quickly, and we're eager to be part of the solution.

Wright: I love it, look forward to working with you in your great state.

Maloy: And with that, I yield.