The National Energy Dominance Council: A Conversation with Jarrod Agen

This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on September 4, 2025.

Joseph Majkut: It’s hard to think of an area in which policy has changed as abruptly in the last 12 months as energy. We’ve gone from a country that was pursuing climate change as a primary goal of its energy policy to one pursuing energy dominance.

And there’s hardly a better person to talk about what that shift means in practice and for the future of our country than our guest today. Jarrod Agen is the executive director of the National Energy Dominance Council and came up to CSIS today to elucidate this in a conversation. Jarrod, welcome to CSIS.

Jarrod Agen: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Dr. Majkut: If I may, very briefly, colleagues who’ve braved the rain today, thank you so much for being here in person. If there’s an alarm or a safety event, please just follow the instructions of a CSIS staff member and the well-lit exit signs.

Jarrod, I want to dive right into it.

Mr. Agen: Go for it.

Dr. Majkut:

 What is energy dominance? And how is the National Energy Dominance Council pursuing the goals of the administration?

Mr. Agen: Yeah. Well, great question. You know, it’s one of these things where you’ve seen those hats that say, Trump was right about everything. And I put the idea of the National Energy Dominance Council into that category. You know, when the president served in the first term there was a lot of things that he wanted to get done on the energy space. And so obviously when he came in the second time, he realized – he knew exactly what he wanted to do. And you’re seeing that across the board, but obviously you’ve seen it on the immigration side. But you’ve definitely seen it on the energy side as well.

As probably a lot of people in this room realize, energy spans so much of industry and government. And he wanted a group at the White House that could cut through the bureaucracy and get projects done that would help America – help America at home, help us sell energy overseas. And he saw that, you know, you could – you could pull a group together that could work with Interior, could work at EPA, could work at the Department of Energy, State Department, trade – all of that, and help industry and help our allies kind of streamline this whole process. And we’ve seen a lot of success with it so far.

You know, a lot of what we do is we are working with industry on projects that they’ve had for years, sometimes decades, when it comes to oil and gas, mining. They’ve had these projects that – I mean, these are jobs. This is adding to our economy. And just stuck in permitting. And I don’t – you know, it doesn’t matter who you are on the political spectrum. Everybody comes in to complain to me about permitting. (Laughter.) And so a group that we pulled together that I think we’ve been very effective – because we didn’t bring in a bunch of academics. We took people directly from industry in particular areas – oil and gas, coal, mining, nuclear. And so we have a very small team. It’s a start up within the White House.

And I appreciate you having me here to talk about it, because even when I walked the halls of the White House in the early days, nobody knew what the Energy Dominance Council is. And so now it’s fun to be able to kind of show some of the wins we’ve put on the board. And really, I think one of the best examples I can give of what energy dominance is, is the ability for us to kind of chart our own course when it comes to the energy space. No matter what the turmoil might be geopolitically, if there is tensions in the Middle East, there is not going to be massive changes here at the U.S., because we can generate our own energy.

And so, like, gas prices aren’t going to fluctuate massively, and there’s going to be lines at the gas pump to pump – to fill up your car, because we’ve put in place the systems to produce our own energy. And then the kind of second step to that is, OK, now that we’ve done that, how do we grow our economy and our GDP by selling that energy overseas to our friends and allies?

Dr. Majkut: I have, like, 18 follow-up questions.

Mr. Agen: Yeah, go for it.

Dr. Majkut: So let’s – like, you mentioned the successes. Give me a short list.

You know, you – like, this has been – you have a team in place. You guys are – you’re meeting with industry. You’re talking to the agencies. What is the – what are the things that you look back even on this short period and say this was – this sort of new administrative thing really did break through?

Mr. Agen: So I’ll give a few examples.

I mean, the one that always jumps out to me – and so there’s kind of phases to this. There’s this kind of low-hanging fruit that when we first came in of just reversing things that were in place under the previous administration. Some of these things were just put in in the final waning hours and, I mean, one of them being just the restrictions on selling LNG overseas.

I mean, think about the massive trade deals we’ve developed over the recent months, and Biden put rules on the books to prevent that from happening and just flipping the switch to turn that off, I mean, it’s just so simple, low-hanging fruit.

Then as you dive into it a little more our team looked at, OK, well, what are things that you can do that you don’t even have to really change the infrastructure but we can produce more. So we looked at offshore commingling, which is basically the ability to use the existing infrastructure but just pull from different sources within the same rig so that you can produce more barrels out of the Gulf of America.

So, again, that’s like – you know, that’s not crawl. That’s the walk phase and now we’re heading the run phase of, like, all right, well, how do we take permitting that would normally take two years and bring it down to two weeks.

And so at the Department of Interior and at CEQ, I mean, they’ve done NEPA reform so that the permitting can really streamline and go from a two-year process to a two-year process. So that was kind of the way we’ve looked at it.

But now what we’re trying to get into is, you know, either through the Big Beautiful Bill or through legislation, like, all of this stuff is helpful in the immediate term because everybody understands the speed of Trump. He wants things done and he wants things done fast.

But I think the thing that I hear all the time, which I’m sure you hear all the time and others, is it’s certainty. The industry and our allied governments they want certainty; if I invest here are things going to stay in place.

And so what we’ve tried to do is work with the legislature on, you know, what do we put in place so that it will last for, you know, 10, 20 years so that there is the certainty to invest again in mining, in oil and gas. And so that’s been a big part of – you know, we had a lot of successes with the One Big Beautiful Bill but now, you know, legislature’s back and so now we’re going to hit the ground running again with them.

Dr. Majkut: Well, that’s – I mean, so that is, to me, I think one of the biggest and most important questions facing our country, right? We have – executives come here to CSIS frequently. We have academics. We have advocates, and permitting reform is the one thing - they all mean a different thing by permitting reform, which we’ll get to in a second.

But they all say that that’s recognized as a priority and one of the things we know from, like, decades of political science is you need that kind of consensus to see big policy change that has to go through Congress.

So everyone has to agree on the problem statement and then we can negotiate the solution. So I guess, you know, what is your thinking about making permanent some of the changes that you all have been able to achieve with executive action?

Mr. Agen: Right. Well, I would say, I mean, some of the things that we haven’t been able to get yet in the One Big Beautiful Bill just because of the logistics of the Byrd rule and all those kind of things is really fixing permitting reform and so an area like permit by rule where, you know, if somebody just has a – you know, similar projects that would help build critical infrastructure in the U.S. that we don’t have to restart the clock and they have to redo the whole process again.

I think that’s one of the things that was loud and clear from the president early on is, OK, great, yes, we have this abundance of energy. We’re able to drill, baby, drill. But if you can’t get it from point A to point B then we don’t have the critical infrastructure needed to really hit this age of abundance.

And so we have seen, you know, some successes in what we were able to do in the One Big Beautiful Bill but being able to build pipelines in this country again and transmission lines, that is kind of a key priority when we look at the permitting reform. It’s probably the top priority for us in the – from an energy perspective and what we’re going to do now that the legislature’s back. I mean, we were laughing and some of the people – not laughing, but I was – we were –

Dr. Majkut: (Laughs.)

Mr. Agen: We’re on a trip – we’re going with Secretary Burgum and Secretary Wright. We’re heading to Europe next week. And we were looking at the map of Europe and just realizing, OK, you’ve got countries that have pipelines and they’ve had centuries of disputes, but yet we don’t have a pipeline that can get from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts. You know what I mean?

Dr. Majkut: (Laughs.)

Mr. Agen: It’s like, how do we overcome that? And so that’s the kind of stuff that we’re trying to get done. But I do think, you know, working with the legislature on permitting reform to build that critical infrastructure is key.

Dr. Majkut: And in that context, you mentioned transmission reform. You know, that is – you know, how much is our – this sort of age of abundance, in your view, an electric one? When we look at sort of the big flashing red lights for risk to our energy system, we’re doing OK on the oil and gas side. There’s always risks there. It’s a global market. Refinery and downstream capacity is always a bit of a question. But it does feel like the big linear infrastructure – gas pipelines and transmission – are the biggest blocking agentsto realizing an age of abundance. Is that roughly your diagnosis?

Mr. Agen: I do think – I mean, we have successes in certain parts of the country on the pipeline and transmission. I think the key is, you know, we’re really – you know, we’ve picked out the areas where we want this infrastructure, and now it’s just getting it through to the finish line. I mean, we’ve done – we’ve already done a trip to Alaska where we viewed the current pipeline that exists there. It’s one of the top priorities of the president to build a second, a pipeline for natural gas through Alaska. I mean, the first one that we viewed was built in the ’70s in – you know, in a year-and-a-half period, and yet now we’re on several years of talking about building this pipeline. But the great thing is, is you’ve got the support all the way up to the president on top.

And all of this stuff is combined because, you know, we’ve talked – you know, we talk about building this pipeline, but all this is tied into the trade deals that Secretary Bessent and Secretary Lutnick and Jamieson are all negotiating with the president. And so, you know, we’re constantly working with the allies in Asia to talk about, hey, how this pipeline in Alaska would be transformational to you.

But I do think one of the things you’re hitting on that I do think is one of the key areas that my team is focused on is just – is the grid in general and beyond just the pipelines. But we kind of have a three-phase approach as we’re looking at the grid because, again, all of this is connected. The grid ties in very closely with a lot of the AI investment and, you know, winning the AI race. I think all of us will agree we’ve got amazing, creative, brilliant engineers that are going to help, you know, win the AI race, but we need the grid and the infrastructure to have the electricity to do it.

And so kind of the first phase of that was stabilizing the grid, and that’s where we used a lot of the tools of the administration. 202(c) is a – is a method that the Department of Energy could use to keep coal-fired plants open. So a lot of coal-fired plants had been closing and on the downturn, and we specifically started to use the authorities to keep those coal-fired plants open. That became especially important in Michigan, where we were tracking and, you know, during the summer at one point we were almost at a blackout through the Midwest, but because we kept this one coal plant open, we avoided that. And so a little of it was stabilizing there.

The second part of that is to optimize the grid. And that is just looking at the efficiency of the grid. What are some of the infrastructure changes you can use? You know, some of these – some of the infrastructure in there is old. How do you put in new equipment, new lines that are just more efficient than the decades before?

Dr. Majkut: And here are you thinking sort of, like, reconductoring projects and upgrading substations?

Mr. Agen: Exactly, exactly.

Dr. Majkut: Like, at some point we bring in the electricity people, and they kind of figure it out?

Mr. Agen: Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly it. And so that’s the process that our team is working on now. And then the last phase of that is to grow. And that’s where the nuclear comes in. And that’s where, you know, we want to build the datacenters, and the nuclear generation, and the grid all combined in the best possible process. And, you know, we’re looking at, across the board, where are – where is this done the best? How do we improve? And so that’s a kind of a longer term one. But ultimately, that’s the grow process of the grid, so we generate more energy and keep it on the grid.

Dr. Majkut: Let me take you on the nuclear point just for a minute, because the president has some very ambitious goals for nuclear renaissance in the United States. Ten gigawatts of large-scale nuclear reactors under construction by 2030, I believe, was the EO from a couple months ago. The secretary of energy is putting a lot of shoulder into supporting SMRs and new nuclear technologies. OBBB creates a tax runway – a tax credit runway for nuclear power in the U.S. Why nuclear? Like, what is the – what’s the motivation? What problem are we solving that has elided us before?

Mr. Agen: Well, I think the technical advancements in nuclear make it key for – you know, it is a – it’s an energy that will be able to produce what we need for these datacenters. There’s so much innovation, and startups, and big global companies that have had huge successes in it so far. And it’s just under-invested right now. And so the key to reaching those goals that you talked about, and the president is very ambitious about this. But he’s ambitious about pretty much everything, and so –

Dr. Majkut: He seems like a fission guy too. (Laughter.)

Mr. Agen: But it’s really a very smart system that he’s put in place. I mean, so leveraging DOD, for example. You know, using that as a way to get some of these early adopter companies off the ground, of working deals and contracts with DOD so that you can build some of the early nuclear generation on the bases. That will get them off the ground and getting some – you know, get them working, seeing how the system works, getting some contracts done. That will allow them to, obviously, help grow the fuel market for nuclear here in the U.S. There’s a big DOE component, where they have some used fuels that still have energy in it. And that can be utilized to help the fuel market. And so that will, hopefully, kind of be an early generation of showing, all right, we’re using – we’re using DOD and DOE as kind of a basis to grow our nuclear effort here. And then all the learning we can do from that, that’s how you span it out into the broader market.

Dr. Majkut: One of the opportunities, and one of the things that seems like the NEDC could play a vital role in, is sort of taking all these different tools and trying to coordinate them appropriately, right? Like, there is not one diagnosis for why the U.S. stopped building nuclear. There’s a lot of reasons. And so combining this, like – sort of the permitting ideas with, you know, building support from the states and the utilities that have to build these things, with the finance interventions that can be made from Treasury and the Department of Energy. Do you see – you know, do you feel that the NEDC sort of sits at the right nexus to help – not direct, but I would say, coalesce efforts from the government?

Mr. Agen: Yeah. I mean, it is – it is excellent to just be at the White House and be able to talk to not just the president, but the senior leadership there, and to – you know, everybody there is embracing how important energy is and how important these projects are. And obviously, Secretary Wright, Secretary Burgum, Lee Zeldin, others – I mean, they’re talking all the time on these issues. And all of them have to work in close coordination on this. And I think that’s one of the great aspects of this, is that those senior principals are all working together on these initiatives.

And there is nothing – I mean, we were giving a speech yesterday about energy. And there is a long list of energy companies that come in to see me, but this was, like, a paper manufacturing company that, you know, they wanted to produce their own energy. They never would have come in to see me in the past. But, anyways, we got to talking, and, I mean, they had a great solution of what they wanted to do. And so it – I do think it will go down as one of the president’s great initiatives to kind of take energy and make it a central focus of his White House.

And you’re seeing that in the trade deals. I mean, and that’s where I think, you know, again, it’s a unique process, because you’ve got that kind of great trade team that is leveraging the U.S. energy. You know, the EU trade deal, for example – $250 billion over three years. We’re talking about $750 billion that the EU is going to purchase from the U.S. And that’s just the EU deal. I mean, there’s a bunch of other ones.

And so those numbers are dramatic and they’re fantastic. And so that is a great goal for our team to then say, OK, the trade – the trade team and the president came up with this amazing trade deal; now how do we filter in achieving those huge numbers? And you know, and it’s going to take a full across-government effort to do that, and we sit at the nexus of that. And so we’re working with, obviously, the trade team, Commerce and Treasury and the USTR, on some of the logistics of it.

But we’re kind of the entry point for a lot of the industry and a lot of kind of our foreign partners that are saying, OK, hey, we do want to switch over to U.S. LNG. Do you have the capacity to do it? And, you know, we’re meeting with LNG companies multiple times a day who are saying to us, yes, we have the capacity. Or, if FERC does this, we’ll have the capacity to do that. You know, we’re close on this infrastructure, but we need this permitting out of whatever department. And so the beauty of what we do is we kind of do sit at the hub of all of that. And we’re able to be a connector for people.

Dr. Majkut: Let’s touch on the international piece in the relationship of energy exports to the broader economic goals of the administration, right? Like, GDP, as an identity, has exports with a positive sign in the front and at the end, right? And so if we want to boost the economy, then boosting exports is, like, a very clear priority. You’re about to head to Gastech, the big industry conference in Italy next week. I think both secretaries, co-chairs of the NEDC will be going. How much is the expansion of the energy exports an LNG play, or is it in all-of-the-above play?

Mr. Agen: Well, very focused on LNG, just because it’s the fastest-growing, it’s the one that people want. You know, Europe has been increasingly moving off of Russian gas. And we want to fill that void, and we are filling that void. And, you know, Italy, for example, we’re going there. I think Italy, if they haven’t already, they’re pretty close to being off of Russian gas and being supplied, you know, primarily by the U.S. And so, anyways, those are some of the key things that we’re going to want. And now it’s all, again, tied together of, you know, we have been building the infrastructure here. It’s the fastest-growing of people buying LNG. We need to do more.

It’s one of the beauties of – we’ve been working with FERC. And FERC has been really good, and is going to get even better, of just moving fast and helping with a lot of these facilities out of the Gulf of America. Obviously, we have the Alaska project. But I do think this is – you know, this is one of the prime areas that we’re hearing from our allies, particularly in Europe and Asia of, OK, we want the LNG. How do we do it? How do we build hubs in Europe to get it through? And then we have – we have so many U.S. companies that are primed to just skyrocket based on these trade deals.

Dr. Majkut: What do these discussions look like? I mean, what do other countries want from the U.S.? To the extent we have to make a sales pitch, what’s our sales pitch?

Mr. Agen: Yeah. Well, it’s great. Well, this is – I mean, that’s why we’re going next week, is the sales pitch. (Laughter.) And so this is a great, great question. Well, one is, obviously, we just touched on the LNG. The second part though is, you know, we’re going to invest heavily on nuclear here in the U.S. And I think you’ve seen, obviously, France has a huge investment in nuclear, but a lot of other European countries, and countries around the world, want to invest in nuclear too. The U.S. has some amazing, fantastic companies that are ahead of the curve on nuclear. They’ve got a ton of startups that are also really coming up with innovative things. And so a lot of companies want to partner with us on nuclear as well.

And then the other aspect of that is just – is the AI aspect to it. And, yes, that’s bigger than just an energy play, but, you know, Secretary Wright and Secretary Burgum very involved in just the overall AI, and how to get enough energy for AI. And so a lot of the companies want to partner with us on AI generation. And actually –

Dr. Majkut: Here and abroad?

Mr. Agen: Yeah.

Dr. Majkut: OK.

Mr. Agen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it’s one of the things – like, when I talk about our kind of phases, like, we’re about – we’re about to embark on a bit of a world tour, where then Secretary Burgum is also going over to the Middle East in November, to the UAE, where this will be another big topic, of these same issues of LNG, and AI, and nuclear.

Dr. Majkut: How much does the – do these commercial negotiations also involve the political alignment of the U.S.? One of the things I’ve seen the rhetoric from the White House is, you know, we want to – we want to be energy abundant at home, and we want to share that abundance with our allies and friends around the world. How much does it – do you think these commercial relationships bolster the – sort of, the security relationship that a lot of allies have with the United States – if informally, if not formally?

Mr. Agen: Hey, I think it’s huge. I mean, given the geopolitical aspect of – you know, I think countries want to partner with us, particularly if they’ve been on Russian gas. And they know that if they can build long term, 10-20-year agreements with the U.S. on LNG, and then talk to us about what’s the long-term play on nuclear, I think that only strengthens us. And you’ve even seen it. I mean, early in my career I worked on the – it was the G-8 summit at the time. I worked at the State Department. It’s the G-7 summit now. And it took a year to plan to get all leaders over to Sea Island, Georgia, for a meeting. Well, what was it, like, two weeks ago the president had, like, you know, a handful of leaders just came on a 24-hour basis. And they had just this kind of massive summit at the White House.

And I think that just speaks to the difference of – it’s bigger than energy, obviously – but they want to come. They want to hear from the president. He is leading on the world stage. And that’s great to feel and be part of again. And energy is, obviously, a big component of that because, you know, one of the big, enticing items we have is that gas that we can help our allies.

Dr. Majkut: Right. I mean, we have – there are competitors in this space. Earlier this week, there was an announcement that kind of there’s going to be further progress on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, bring, I think, 50 BCM if I recall correctly gas from Russia into China. Really an expansion of their energy relationship and sort of restoring what had been gas supply kind of otherwise lost to global markets in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.

You know, how does the U.S. position itself to be energy dominant when we have other players in the game, right? Who are our friends in this endeavor, and who are our competitors, and how do we beat them?

Mr. Agen: Well, how we beat them is moving faster at the speed of Trump, which is what we’re trying to do. But I mean, I do think the trade deals are a huge part of that. I mean, if you’re – you know, these are eye-popping numbers that we’re talking about, and we’re going to hit those numbers. And so that will just be kind of a massive boon for the U.S. economy and for those U.S. – I mean, they are champing at the bit to invest and build infrastructure. We are helping them with the permitting. Again, things are moving faster in the Gulf of America in particular to get those throughout the world.

But I’ll go back to that point that I kind of made earlier of, like, I think it’s working for us. And the reason is, I mean, I do think if you’re – if you had to look at, you know, the situation that we went through of – with Iran of bombing and then this kind of narrative that they might mine the strait and what would happen, I mean, we were tracking it every day. We were having meetings at the White House about it. And you know, the price of oil, the price of gas here in the U.S. really never fluctuated.

Dr. Majkut: Hardly blinked, yeah.

Mr. Agen: And that is a testament to we can get it done here. And it’s the investments that have been made over the – over the past several years. But if we just stay on the path we’re on thanks to the president, you know, that’s not just going to be the case for crude oil; I mean, that’s going to be the case for the LNG and it will ultimately be the case for nuclear, and it will help us win the AI race.

Dr. Majkut: In that context, like, kind of return to the domestic side of things, right? Shortly after the Biden administration announced the pause on new export terminal licenses, we did a ton of research and blogposts and conversations here at CSIS trying to evaluate that question of national interest for the LNG industry. One of the concerns –

Mr. Agen: Did you ever figure out why he did it?

Dr. Majkut: I think I have a pretty good idea, yeah. But one of the concerns was that increasing – and this has been something that the industry has faced for a long time – increasing gas exports, particularly at the volumes we’re going to – we’re going to do over the next five years, is going to raise domestic prices, and that’s going to challenge the low-energy-price advantage that our manufacturers and our citizens have. Do you see an integrated approach where the sort of domestic energy dominance agenda focused on pipelines, focused on abundance, kind of allows for the energy dominance to be spread abroad? Or what risk factors are you watching for in that context?

Mr. Agen: Yeah. I guess I would say, you know, the president is – obviously, he’s focused on energy prices here in the U.S. I mean, it comes up quite often. He jokes about it publicly. But obviously, you know, I mean, he’s tracking what people are paying at the pump, and just the – you know, the fact that we kind of celebrated over Labor Day of just the prices were the lowest they’ve been in five years. And so, you know, he’s got his finger on the pulse of that. And I don’t expect he is ever going to not just look at, OK, what are people paying here domestically.

Now, I do think, you know, all of the items he’s done on the world stage with tariffs and the trade deals, you know, there’s – there were always talk of, hey, this would raise prices and this would, you know, hurt the consumers, and we haven’t seen that and in fact it’s been working and it’s led to some of these great deals.

And so but I do think, you know, he is always looking specifically at, you know, what is the blue collar worker doing, how are they – how is it affecting their electricity prices as we go into the winter, what is it going to mean in heating homes, what is it going to mean at the pump to fill up.

And so that is always kind of the North Star of as we look –

Dr. Majkut: If I can test an idea with you.

I mean, you’ve talked about the Alaska LNG project and one of the things that sort of makes that appealing in an energy dominance frame is that it’s gas that’s otherwise not being used – it’s being re-injected into reservoirs – and it’s a next available resource that actually isn’t a lower 48 market issue, right? It’s sort of like – so there’s, like, you can think about it as being there’s multiple reasons.

Does that sort of accord with your thinking about why this is such an exciting project?

Mr. Agen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we had the privilege of going up there and seeing it and going up to the North Slope and just – and seeing where the pipeline would be and, yeah, I think there has been this unnecessary war with Alaska under the last administration of not utilizing the abundance that they had there.

And having gone up there to the North Slope and talking to the people that live up there – I’m not talking about the workers but the native Alaskans who live up there – they want this. I mean, they want the power generation and they want the drilling and they want this to succeed and so – but I a hundred percent agree, I mean, this is a project that would help not just Alaska but it would help the overall U.S. It would help our allies overseas.

It is something that we are working with across the board, obviously, with the governor of Alaska and the senators from Alaska but, you know, it’s one of the only projects the president mentioned in his joint address to Congress and, again, checking in on it regularly. We’re going to have another trip up to Alaska this fall and just there’s a lot of exciting stuff already happening up in the North Slope of Alaska. There’s a lot of the big industry players. You know, the secretary of interior has already made moves on the NPRA.

And so, you know, again, these were some of the low-hanging fruit of, like, why was this shut down when this could be a massive resource for the whole U.S.

Dr. Majkut: Colleagues from the media, we’re going to turn to you just in a moment.

Jared, I do have to ask about renewables. So your critics will say, we also recognize power generation needs. We need a lot more primary energy in the U.S. and there is the perception that the president and the administration is moving unfairly against renewables, which is the fastest-growing source of new electricity in the country.

What we hear from the administration is we’re balancing the scales from what had been a previously favored sector and sort of reorienting the industry to provide value where it can.

What is your response to that debate? What should people understand about the approach of the Trump administration?

Mr. Agen: Yeah, I think it was given unfair preferential treatment in the past, particularly in the last administration. What the president and I think the team at the White House is the most against is, obviously, just the American taxpayer covering the cost of the intermittent energy that is not producing what it has promised to produce and there is not the return of investment.

And so it’s the tax credits – it’s the tax subsidies that have really kept these afloat for a long time and basically the president is saying enough is enough. I mean, if you cannot survive without the tax subsidies at this point then you’re not going to survive.

And so his point is we need base load energy. The demand for energy is just going to increase. The renewables, the intermittent sources, are not the answer.

The answer long-term is, obviously, nuclear and the way to get there is going to be oil and gas and LNG in this period right now.

Dr. Majkut: Interesting. Let me ask one final question. You know, the president has, I think, a very different vision for energy than, one, is commonly understood and certainly than we saw from the last administration.

Let’s assume unbridled success. Twenty years from now how is the U.S. stronger, wealthier, and what does our energy system look like because of the success of this period?

Mr. Agen: Yeah. I would say an improved grid. I mean, I think that’s the – I think we’re on a great path when it comes to the production and, obviously, we touched on it but the critical – the pipelines to get it through I think we’re on a good path.

But it’s setting up that grid for success and that is using all these components we talked about of the LNG pipelines but putting the right infrastructure for the grid and then setting it up right so that what is need(ed) to generate artificial intelligence is there but it’s also not at the expense of the – you know, the rate payer.

Dr. Majkut: If I may, one of the things we’ve seen from the administration is, like, sort of a reorientation of a lot of the tools of government, right? So, like, the Loan Programs Office is a great example.

Mr. Agen: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Dr. Majkut: Like, I think a lot of people came into the administration – I speak not for you – saw the LPO, thought it was this climate thing, realized, oh, this can be, like, an energy innovation thing and rather than ablate it have reoriented it.

You can see the same thing happening in the Grid Deployment Office which was created by the IIJA to say this program was used to foster reliability projects and renewables projects – we want to do it to do load growth: big AI data centers, long-distance transmission. Like, do you kind of – should we look for kind of continued efforts from the administration to move those programs –

Mr. Agen: Yeah. No, I think that’s absolutely right. We’re talking to the Department of Energy a lot about the LPO – Loan Program Office – and reimagining that for a lot of what we just talked about for nuclear projects, strengthening the grid.

And so, yes, it’s really reevaluating how that arm is working of the government. The other thing that I didn’t touch upon, which I definitely need to, is the whole critical minerals aspect of this, and so we had a lot of success in the One Big Beautiful Bill of putting in much-needed funds kind of across different entities to invest in critical minerals, to invest in mining.

Our team is heavily involved in that as well but that’s a big component of all of this is not just get mining going again here in the U.S. but investing so that when, you know, China or others are kind of, you know, manipulating the market or coming in to invest in mining projects globally that we have the funds we need so that, you know, the auto industry and the tech industry and all these are getting the critical minerals that they need.

And so that’s another big piece that we’re kind of reimagining how U.S. funding can be used to help on the critical mineral –

Dr. Majkut: So I hear two things, just to – if I may summarize and you can tell me if I got it right or not.

Mr. Agen: Sure. (Laughs.)

Dr. Majkut: Like, the agenda is about unlocking the resources that the United States has natively. It’s about using them to foster stronger economic and security relationships with our allies, to protect ourselves from coercion, and to stay at the front of the sort of new economic areas: AI, reshoring manufacturing, and, like, I would argue it’s national renewal more than anything else.

Is that, roughly, correct?

Mr. Agen: I think that’s very correct. You sum that all up and that’s energy dominance for you.

Dr. Majkut: Great, well, thank you so much.

Colleagues who are joining us from the media you’re welcome to offer a question to Jared.

Jen, you go ahead and start. Thank you.

Mr. Agen: Hi, Jen.

Q: Thanks. I’m Jennifer Dlouhy, Bloomberg News. Thanks for doing this.

I heard the economic argument, obviously, around renewables, around intermittency and subsidies, but you also said that industry and our allies want certainty to invest in energy infrastructure, mining, et cetera.

How do you square that goal with the uncertainty signals that do come from revoking authorizations and stopping work on fully permitted offshore wind projects?

Mr. Agen: Well, I would say, I mean, those – the certainties around investing capital into projects that are not reliant on government tax dollars. And so if you want to invest in a – in a project that you can be financially viable in and you’re not reliant on tax subsidies to do it, I think that’s the message that we’re trying to show. And I think that we have seen success on the fossil fuels, and so – but a lot of those companies were treated very unfairly over the last four years. They didn’t have the certainty that they needed. And that is what is going to provide the baseload energy and help satisfy a lot of these trade deals. And so in order to invest in massive, billion-dollar facilities to export LNG out of the Gulf of America, you want the certainty that if you’re going to invest that kind of money that the policies are going to be in place that, you know, you’re not going to stop LNG exports at the eleventh hour for some reason that nobody understands. And so that’s what I talk about when I talk about certainty.

Dr. Majkut: Yes, Ari.

Q: Hey. Ari Natter, also from Bloomberg.

I wanted to follow up on the question about renewables and offshore wind. So we saw last month the administration halt Orsted’s project, which was 80 percent complete. Do you think there’s anything that, you know, Democratic governors backing that project could do to help unlock it?

And also I’m curious, you know, excluding Empire Wind, there’s three other offshore wind farms under construction. Do you think we might see similar treatment, you know, where those projects get halted by the administration as well?

Mr. Agen: Well, I can’t talk about the Orsted. I know that they, I believe, filed lawsuits today, so I’m not going to get myself in trouble and talk about Orsted.

There is a systematic review that the president has called for from the beginning of looking at all wind projects and were they permitted where they – was it rushed in the reviews? How does it affect national security? How does it affect commercial fishing? How does it – how does it affect the environment? And I think there’s a feeling that some of these were not properly vetted under the Biden administration. And so – but that stems back all the way from the early days when the president came back into office of reviewing all of these wind projects, and so I know the Department of Interior is doing that process.

Dr. Majkut: Front row. The lady and then the gentleman.

Q: Hi. Callie Patteson with the Washington Examiner.

I wanted to turn to drill, baby, drill. We saw this week ConocoPhillips is laying off up to 25 percent of their workforce, and a lot of producers that I’ve been talking to, especially in the Permian, are not confident that drill, baby, drill can happen under these market conditions as production prices are going up and futures are going down. Is the Energy Dominance Council aware of these concerns? And what are you guys hoping to kind of get – or at least, you know, help settle those concerns within the industry? And for you personally, do you believe that drill, baby, drill can happen this year?

Mr. Agen: I hundred percent believe drill, baby, drill can happen this year.

Yeah, we’re talking to all of the Permian companies on a regular basis. I mean, a lot of it is – again, some of this is the certainty of what is kind of the long-term commitments that they can put into place. And it’s – and it’s innovation as well. And it’s some of these, you know, kind of fixes that we could do like comingling where they don’t have to put in a lot of more capital, and that’s onshore and offshore, so that they don’t have to necessarily build more and spend more but they can produce more. And so we’re working very – on a daily basis with all the Permian companies on how their kind of long-term plans can – we can help improve those.

But again, I mean, at the end of the day the president wants the price of the pump to be low, and so that doesn’t always coordinate with what industry wants. And so we work for the president, and so we’re going to do what the president wants. But that means drill, baby, drill is going to be in place, and that means that, you know, the American consumer is going to have low gas prices. And we’ve had success with that and we’re going to continue to do that.

Dr. Majkut: Excellent. And we’ll go to the gentleman in the front.

Q: Thanks for talking. Brian Dabbs E&E News.

So, as you’ve discussed a bit today, nuclear is a major priority for the administration. It’s also a technology that’s heavily reliant on tax breaks. We saw Secretary Wright lobby hard in Congress to preserve those tax breaks during the Big Beautiful ill. And according to Secretary Wright, it’s also reliant on other federal tools, like the LPO. So why – you’ve been talking about certainty and, you know, technologies – certainty for technologies that are not reliant on tax breaks. So why is nuclear an exception? And then separately, forgive the hard pivot, you talked about a trip this fall to Alaska. Is that also focused on the Alaska LNG pipeline? And can you just talk more about that trip?

Mr. Agen: Yeah, of course. That’s the easy one, so I’ll take that one first. Yes, it will be focused on the pipeline, critical minerals. There’s also some road infrastructure that we want to get done up in Alaska. So those are kind of the three big components that we’re going to look at when we go up to Alaska.

Nuclear is new, in that we need to invest in it to get ahead. And it’s the long-term play that the president wants to put in place. It hasn’t had the proper kind of investment. It hasn’t had the focus that some of the other intermittent have had. And, frankly, nuclear will be able to produce the kind of energy that is needed on a reliable basis that is going to be needed for the grid. And we also think that it’s more American. I mean, a lot of the materials that are used for wind and solar are from – not from American sources. And nuclear can be. And so that’s why we’re focused on nuclear.

Dr. Majkut: Is there a(n) aspect there of kind of future economic potential? We talked a little bit about deploying American nuclear technology abroad. But, again, in sort of a, you know, exports-driven administration, like, nuclear reactors and nuclear technology are big deals.

Mr. Agen: Some of the – yes. The companies that are at forefront of building nuclear reactors are American companies. I met today with the company that is not American but wants to build here in America on nuclear, because they know that they’ll have the proper kind of workforce and backing of the government to do that. And so, yeah. I mean, this is a – this is a win-win for president and win for America.

Dr. Majkut: Well, we look forward to seeing the sort of – you know, in this next – in the next future phases, U.S. efforts on nuclear, I think, is something that a lot of people would welcome. Not just here, but around the world. Ben, do you have one last one?

Q: Yeah.

Dr. Majkut: All right.

Q: I got two questions, if I can.

One will go with Alaska. We’ve seen the administration basically take equity stakes in, you know, tech companies where they want to promote, you know, artificial intelligence. And I’m tying this with the Alaska LNG project, which the administration is very focused on. Would there ever be any consideration of having the government directly invest in Alaska LNG, given that it’s been, you know, many years without any company deciding they want to invest in it?

Mr. Agen: I haven’t been in conversations of that. I do think what we’ve talked about is – you know, there are – there are DOD sources. There’s, you know, bases in Alaska that could be used as offtake agreements on LNG. But, no, I haven’t heard discussions right now about, you know, the U.S. investing as a partner, necessarily.

Q: And then final question. You know, the Dallas Fed surveys that come out regularly, where they take the kind of the temperature of the oil patch in their kind of purview, we see a lot of complaints basically that the administration may be – you know, when it says, drill, baby, drill, it’s counting on OPEC to keep prices down. You know, drill, baby, drill where, I think, is one of the comments that came through. Is the administration worried that by keeping prices so low – you kind of mentioned this earlier – that keeping prices so low, it’s hurting businesses in the Permian, to the benefit of the OPEC countries that are increasing their own output?

Mr. Agen: I think we’re tracking it closely. I would say, I mean, we’re not going to get off of drill, baby, drill. That’s going to be the mantra. Again, like I mentioned, I mean, the president wants low gas prices at the pump. But, I mean, I’d say the same token, you know, we’re talking all the time with the Permian companies and industry there. And if there are ways we can help them succeed in this environment, we’re going to try and help them succeed.

Dr. Majkut: Great.

I do have to end on time, so apologies to those who didn’t get a chance to ask a question. Jarrod, thank you so much for joining us today. I think it’s important that you came out and kind of help us understand out here in the community what it is you’re up to. I hope this gives folks in the room a better picture of the goals of the Council and its methods. And you know, we stand ready to help you guys achieve your goals. So thank you so much for joining us.

Mr. Agen: Thank you. Thanks for having me. (Applause.)

 (END.)