Second Meeting of India-US Strategic Energy Partnership

U.S. Secretary of Energy and Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas and Steel of India has co-chaired the 2nd Ministerial meeting of the U.S.-India Strategic Energy Partnership (SEP) on 17 July 2020. The discussions covered the entire gamut of bilateral energy issues.

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Key-Points

The two sides signed a MOU to begin cooperation on Strategic Petroleum Reserves operation and maintenance. They also discussed the possibility of India storing oil in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase their nation’s strategic oil stockpile.

USAID announced partnership with Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO) to develop India’s National Open Access Registry (NOAR).

The sides launched a public-private Hydrogen Task Force to help scale up technologies to produce hydrogen from renewable energy and fossil fuel sources.

They also signed an MOU to collaborate on India’s first-ever Solar Decathlon in 2021.

The U.S. Department of Commerce launched an Energy Industry Working Group for India under the Asia EDGE initiative to facilitate private sector connections and ideas for U.S.-India energy cooperation, including on innovative and disruptive technologies.

They announced new areas of research on transformational power generation based on supercritical CO2 (sCO2) power cycles and advanced coal technologies for power generation and hydrogen production, including carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS).