Washington was buzzing the weekend of Dec. 10-11 with reports that President-elect Donald J. Trump was considering ExxonMobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex W. Tillerson as his Secretary of State. It looked very much like a leak from Trump's transition team to determine whether the US Senate, which confirms presidential cabinet nominations, and the public would accept the idea.
Questions that were raised about it have been covered extensively elsewhere. What had not, as of Dec. 12, was the growing acceptance of energy as a diplomatic tool in the State Department's arsenal.
DOS launched the Bureau of Energy Resources (BER) on Nov. 16, 2011, after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced its formation about a month earlier. "You can't talk about our economy or foreign policy without talking about energy," she said at the time. "With a growing global population and a finite supply of fossil fuels, the need to diversify our supply is urgent."
BER's three main purposes, at the outset, were "to manage the geopolitics of today's energy economy through vigorous diplomacy with producers and consumers; to stimulate market forces for transformational policies in alternative energy, electricity, development, and reconstruction; and to increase access to energy in developing countries, expand good governance, and deepen transparency."
When Amos J. Hochstein, BER's special envoy, was asked when he spoke to the German Marshall Fund in Brussels on Nov. 28 what lessons he learned in his time at the bureau's helm, he said one was the ability to use diplomacy to learn what the other side's needs are, not only in energy terms but also politically, and try to find mutually achievable solutions.
Hochstein said it's important "to understand that the political interests are not only a necessary evil, but an actual value. Then how do you turn the collective wants-what the [European Union] wants, what the United States wants, what we think is the right thing for the community-into the political imperative for the other side as well?"
'The perception matters'
Where problems can arise is when groups of countries view some of their members as less significant and their needs as less important, Hochstein said. "Whether it's true or not doesn't matter; it's the perception that matters," he said. "Decisions are made on emotions and perceptions, as well as upon data and fact. So if you tie all that together, I still think that's the role of diplomacy."
Energy is never going to lead politics, Hochstein said. But it can help bring countries together to address mutual needs and, in the eastern Mediterranean, "start to change relationships from cold to extremely warm and strategic," he said.
Nick Snow
NICK SNOW covered oil and gas in Washington for more than 30 years. He worked in several capacities for The Oil Daily and was founding editor of Petroleum Finance Week before joining OGJ as its Washington correspondent in September 2005 and becoming its full-time Washington editor in October 2007. He retired from OGJ in January 2020.