Updates with changes throughout
US energy secretary Rick Perry intends to resign later this year, capping more than two years in a post where he pushed to expand domestic energy production and urged other countries to buy US LNG.
President Donald Trump today confirmed Perry will be stepping down and said he already has a replacement in mind.
Perry, who was Texas' longest-serving governor, joined Trump's administration in March 2017. He is one of the few original members of Trump's cabinet still serving.
"Rick has done a fantastic job," Trump said. "But it was time."
Perry credited Trump for promoting US energy production. "We no longer depend on other nations for our energy supply — nor are we beholden to the geopolitics of other world leaders for our energy security," he said.
Perry's tenure — until recently — was free of the turmoil that has rocked agencies such as the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency during Trump's presidency.
But Perry's involvement earlier this year in helping to arrange a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, originally meant to discuss LNG, has pulled him into an impeachment inquiry that has paralyzed Washington.
Democrats in the US House of Representatives last week subpoenaed Perry for documents related to the call.
Perry has said he urged Trump to speak to his Ukrainian counterpart on energy issues but denied those talks veered into a "quid pro quo" request to dig up dirt on political rivals.
During that call, Trump pressured Zelenskiy to investigate former vice president and leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Hunter in 2014-18 served on the board of directors of Ukrainian private gas producer Burisma Holdings.
The Energy Department has relatively little role in energy production and instead is primarily responsible for issuing export licenses for LNG. Perry, in his role as head of the agency, urged other countries to sign long-term deals to buy LNG from proposed US projects.
Perry drew the greatest controversy in his term in 2017 when he used a rarely used authority to order the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to review a plan for bailing out struggling coal and nuclear plants. FERC ultimately rejected the plan, and the White House never acted on a subsequent plan from Perry to develop next steps.
