US energy secretary Perry to resign

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.

Trump plans to announce his new pick to run the US Energy Department tonight at a rally in Dallas, Texas. Perry is a former governor of Texas, holding that post longer than any other in the state's history.

Perry joined the administration in May 2017, making him one of the few remaining original members of Trump's cabinet.

"Rick has done a fantastic job," Trump said. "But it was time."

Perry's tenure was free of the turmoil that has consumed a number of other federal agencies during Trump's presidency — until recently.

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.