RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA — U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright delivered remarks at a press conference in Riyadh on Sunday and announced the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at a later date to advance cooperation across key areas of energy. The non-binding agreement outlines a framework for collaboration in both traditional and emerging energy sectors, reinforcing shared strategic priorities without financial or legal commitments.
Secretary Wright’s full remarks from the press conference are below:
I want to start by thanking my fabulous hosts, the Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman and the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. They’ve been so welcoming for myself and our delegation from the United States to come talk about our nations, our road to cooperation, our road for mutual beneficial progress going forward. We’ve made very wide-ranging dialogs for a day and a half now, and they’re going to continue.
We’ve talked about energy and all aspects of energy. We’ve talked about mining critical materials. We’ve talked about processing and industry. We’ve talked about climate change. We’ve talked about human lives and what drives their improvement and how best to achieve those ends.
We’ve talked about some of the obstacles that both of our countries have struggled with in the last several years, particularly on energy. You know, we’ve had a growing global movement, including in my country, the United States, that stood in opposition to energy development—somehow thought the road to a better world was less energy, less empowerment of individuals, and therefore less economic prosperity and less freedom.
So, our broader objectives, which we share, are prosperity at home and peace abroad. We’ve also talked about geo-politics. Peace abroad is every bit as critical as prosperity at home, but they’re linked together. They’re linked together.
Our newly elected President Trump was elected very much on a platform of removing barriers in the United States to the prosperity of our citizens. And by making America stronger and our people more prosperous, our relationships with our allies stronger, we can achieve peace abroad.
As the broader agenda— we discussed, we came at the end to an agreement. We’re coming together on a memorandum that’s broad, and I will announce that right now. We will sign it at a later date, but we’ve developed a broad memorandum of so many areas that the two countries will work together in cooperation to better develop energy resources, energy infrastructure, both in the United States and here in the Kingdom—mining cooperation, civilian nuclear technology and energy production.
We’re going to work on that as well. There’s simply so many aligned interests of our two nations. So, I will announce the agreement of a memorandum. There’ll be a separate date where we’ll sign that memorandum and announce more of the specific efforts that are going to be launched based on that.
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