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Wright Delivers Remarks at the IEA Ministerial Press Conference, Feb. 19, 2026

February 19, 2026 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:17:04

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright delivered remarks at the International Energy Agency ministerial press conference, in the Department of Energy’s upload of the February 19, 2026 event. Wright presented the administration’s doctrine as energy addition — the answer, he said, to poverty, clean cooking, affordability, and national security alike — and energy policy returned to common sense: about people making their lives better, and math.

Wright contrasted the United States and Europe over 15 years: both at 25 percent of global consumption then, the United States at 28 percent today and the European nations at 17 percent, as he stated the shares — a divergence he called a political choice to make energy expensive, which exported energy-intensive manufacturing out of Europe. On the IEA itself, he said the agency’s World Energy Outlook reports for five years were based on European climate policies being adopted by the world, which he said is simply not going to happen; the United States wants honesty returned to the agency, he said — “We don’t want to leave.”

Why it matters

The ministerial press conference is Wright’s reform-or-else message to the IEA delivered on its own stage: membership continues, on his account, only if the agency returns its focus to energy security and reality-based outlooks — the same argument he carried to the clean-cooking session the day before.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Secretary Wright’s IEA position on February 19, 2026 — the United States does not want to leave the agency but conditions its conscience about membership on the IEA restricting neither energy growth nor developing nations, as he stated it, alongside his 28 percent / 17 percent U.S.-Europe consumption comparison. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Delivers Remarks at the IEA Ministerial Press Conference - February 19, 2026” (official upload, embedded above; remarks as delivered by Secretary Wright).