Natural gas has become so important to our future that earlier this year I asked the National Petroleum Council, which advises me on energy issues, to supplement its previous work on natural gas issues by producing a new report on natural gas in the United States in the twenty-first century.

Fortunately, worldwide reserves of natural gas are abundant, with the United States and Algeria comfortably among the top 10 nations for reserves.

But despite our domestic capability and the large reserves of our neighbors Canada and Mexico, the United States will import increasing amounts of natural gas delivered across oceans by tanker – liquefied natural gas. Today, imports of LNG account for a little more than half-a-percent of our natural gas consumption. By 2020, they will account for about two percent – more than triple today's volume, according to EIA projections.

Clearly, natural gas is an important component of our national energy plan – reliable, affordable, environmentally sound energy for the future.

The United States, of course, is not the only nation to see the obvious benefits of natural gas, or to require imported LNG to meet growing demand. The EIA projects that worldwide demand for natural gas will nearly double by 2020, to over 160 trillion cubic feet.

As worldwide demand for natural gas grows, current LNG exporters are ramping up their production capacity and numerous other gas-rich countries are planning to join today's LNG exporters, adding new competitors to global LNG markets. As their plans ripen, there will also be intensified competition for access to the capital, expertise and technology resources of private energy companies, many of them American.

Clearly, there could be no better time for an LNG Summit with Algeria, the world's first LNG exporter and an old and valued trading partner of ours.

Now that I've shown how important natural gas and LNG are to America's energy portfolio, and therefore to our energy security, let me turn to what we can do to our mutual benefit to strengthen our energy trade and investment relationship with Algeria.

Let me begin with an issue that we will have to address here in the United States before too long: the building of new LNG terminals to receive LNG, re-gasify it and put it into pipelines for delivery to consumers. We have four LNG terminals today – three on the East Coast and one on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. We also have proposals for building as many as thirteen new terminals to serve U.S. customers.

But investors and developers say that unless federal regulations governing "open access" are modified, the development of those new terminals could be threatened, discouraging LNG imports into the U.S.

Let me say here that the Department of Energy takes these concerns seriously and we have recently taken the first steps to analyzing and evaluating the impact a modification of the regulations would have, keeping in mind that since the construction of the existing four terminals the entire natural gas value chain has been largely deregulated.

A key element of our energy plan's plank for enhanced international energy relationships is the stress it lays on reducing barriers to trade and investment and implementing a system of clear, open and transparent rules and procedures governing foreign investment.

Today's Summit and the enthusiastic, overflow response it has generated, prove that both our governments, and the private sector, want to work together to lower those barriers, to forge productive partnerships, and to further develop our LNG relationship.

Private companies bring great strengths to the energy sector, among them advanced technology and operating efficiency, and they are both critical to the LNG sector, because of the need to drive down LNG production costs. It is only by lowering costs that LNG will be able to stay competitive with natural gas prices.

President Bouteflika and Minister Khelil are well aware of these facts and we applaud the efforts of the Algerian government to reform and privatize its energy sector, as well as other important sectors such as banking.

Private energy companies are already active in Algeria, of course, and the people of our two nations and others have been working together and building relationships for years. Many of you in this room, in fact, and the organizations and companies you represent, have been instrumental in building the energy relationships we enjoy today.

As we move forward in improving and cementing our two countries' energy relations, I want to tell you that I am honored to have been able to build an unusually close and productive relationship with President Bouteflika and Minister Khelil during my tenure as Energy Secretary. We believe in the potential and the importance of our two countries' relationship – and we are determined to do whatever we can to see to it that relations flourish between our governments, our commercial and business institutions, our companies and our people.

I believe, and I'm certain that Minister Khelil will agree, that we can put our personal relationship and our commitment to the success of this project to work as a problem-solving mechanism for Algerian and U.S. companies when they need to resolve the sometimes difficult and thorny business issues that arise in any commercial enterprise. For the sake of both our countries, we want to see to it that important energy projects move ahead with a minimum of delay. From the time the possibility of a Summit was first broached by Presidents Bush and Bouteflika in July 2001, to the Preliminary LNG Roundtable meeting held last spring, and right up to this morning, interest in expanding the U.S.– Algerian LNG trade and investment relationship has exceeded our expectations.

The business community and government agencies that you represent are the best proof of the business potential and the mutual benefit our two countries could derive from an enhanced energy relationship, particularly with respect to LNG.

To be able to meet, talk, examine the issues and make useful contacts in an atmosphere charged with a collective enthusiasm for the work ahead, as we are doing today, is a great advantage to the United States and Algeria. Opportunities such as the one presented at this Summit do not come along very often. When they do, we must make the most of them.

I believe all of us here know that more LNG trade, more investment, more cooperation and collaboration will only result in development, growth, increasing prosperity and greater understanding between our nations and our people.

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