A bipartisan group of lawmakers is working to revive an energy diplomacy bureau that the Trump administration wiped out last year before its war against Iran threw global oil and gas markets into turmoil.
A bill up for a vote in a House committee Wednesday would essentially be a rebuke of the White House’s dismantling of the office by reconstituting in all but name the States Department’s Energy Resources Bureau that tackled global energy issues. The Elon Musk-led DOGE team killed it last year, dismissing many of the bureau’s subject-matter experts and placing most of the rest — largely those handling critical minerals — under the department’s bureau for economic and business matters.
The lawmakers’ new bill, H.R. 7037, set to be marked up Wednesday in the House Foreign Affairs Committee would create a “Bureau of Energy Security and Diplomacy” as well as establishing a new office to hammer out energy and mineral agreements with other countries. Known as the “DOMINANCE Act” and sponsored by California’s Republican Rep. Young Kim and Democratic Rep. Ami Bera, it would also order State to “prioritize” hiring people laid off from the energy bureau last year.
The latest push for a new energy bureau — which was endorsed last fall in legislation passed by the House committee — comes as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent oil prices spiking and created a global energy crisis that is threatening the world’s economies.
