noon the things you say is the last thing you want to happen is developing these markets that get burned with bad products, just forget it, never mind. is there any -- all three of view, i will let my last question alluded to earlier, ranking the most favorable countries, i have to believe you have done a lot of thought on this, just at a glance there is going to be a lot of factors that are going to influence candidate population, topography, gas, oil pipeline

availability. education resources, do you have network that you can train out to do this? of course i mentioned earlier property owners, ownership, is the system in place to take over to condemn property, right away, the timing, is it right for the company but stability, is a stable system of government, those of the seven things i came up with. do you rank countries that might be the best benefits in the infrastructure. >> thank you for your question. sounds like you were at some of these meetings where these things were discussed by listing all of those. >> the nsa was there. i just got the tapes. sorry. >> we don't have a public

listing, in the first face we did carefully through a rigorous interagency process discuss which would be the six focus countries and the factors you describe guaranteed many of the things that we looked at to assess who would be the good partners and we will go through a similar process as we think about the expansion. there is plenty to say on all of them but one of the ones i will spend a moment on is the host country's commitment because as the other testimony alluded to it you have viable electric utilities, if you're trying to solve some of the problems that are private sector investors have encountered in trying to do viable deals you have got to have a commitment to do things differently so that was one of many components but that was one of the most important components to make sure we have committed

partners who would do this in partnership with us in the private sector. >> i can't give you a ranking but i mentioned a number of countries that we are working with the new oil and gas side that are different at different stages in their development, some are more gasper and. others look like good oil potential like an ebola, etc.. i think the companies, we have a range of companies, the u.s. included that are working in these areas, that they are assessing the risk and the commercial viability of these resources. there is a lot of exploratory drilling planned in these countries. this is for a last couple years there has been a lot of activity

in this area so it will be a couple years before this shakes out in terms of where the biggest opportunities but mozambique and tanzania in terms of the gas resources that everyone is looking at for export as well as looking at potential for east africa at and including south africa the potential for that gas to develop the infrastructure, there was recently a seminar we had as part of the ministerial but looked at the east africa gas infrastructure opportunities that was done by the energy sector is that there's a report on that i would be happy to send you on that issue. in terms of the issue of the investment climate, the question of whether countries, whether investors are willing to come in without sovereign guarantees is

a key factor, some countries, we were willing to coming without a sovereign guarantee. in other countries you won't. you have to look to are there in a sense partial risk guarantees and other mechanisms that the world bank or others can put in place that will in that sense mitigate some risk of the investment. >> i recognize mr. stockman. >> thank you for the panel coming out, friday. according to your testimony, in government for 40 years and you mentioned you are in bangladesh, is that a good 40 years? my question is when i was overbear in nigeria, they were mentioning some policies and i am wondering, you had standards. were there any standards that preventing direction by the state department which is predicated on the government that social policies or was it

strictly benign interpretation of the capabilities? one of in nigeria they were trying to free the girls that were kidnapped and the u.s. military said we need to get permission from our government to facilitate information and it was denied because of the interpretation of the president's leadership in nigeria. the peduncle similar restriction on governments such as you got and nigeria and say we don't get involved because of their social policies or is that a separate issue? ? >> as we look at the overall engagement in the countries, you can work closely with the ambassador and embassies in assessing the political situation, the severity of the issues if there are social or human-rights issues and make a decision on that case by case

basis. it is hard to generalize other than to say we are not just pursuing energy for energy's sake. it is part of our broader foreign policy interests that takes into account -- >> maybe you know off the top of your head, is nigeria or you'd honda, are there restrictions you have in terms of working with them on energy? >> i think right now we started in you gone that early on in terms of the energy government's capacity initiative and we have done a lot of work on the geophysical side, environmental land-use planning, etc.. i think this situation to the best of my understanding is we have put on hold any further working you got the. >> is that because of social

policies? >> i was asking, to go back, >> i think actually congressman smith would be interested in that. congressman weber. we would all be interested. on a personal level when i was in nigeria, i think could actually i think from mr. postal's administration or department that advocated that we not involve military intelligence in helping nigeria because of the interpretations of the current government's position, to me that was

alarming because i now found out today that the chinese have given nigeria's;s they have been requesting for the united states. my fear is because of our policies we may be driving, the comment, being read colonize not by the british americans, the chinese. in the republic of congo there is a whole mountain of copper, was sold for pennies on the dollar and the chinese have their workers there and there is no kind of interplay for development with host countries. it is very much, i would argue worse than what colonial governments ever did and yet the chinese are continually expanding their involvement and my concern is we put restrictions on ourselves, to which we become less important to those most countries. as you go forward i would hope

you would see that the chinese are a serious player and in terms of, and titian with the united states could be problematic down the line. you're shaking your head yes. i hope you can tell me. >> thank you, congressman. i will take note of your comments and i will investigate further in discussion with the head of our office. i am not familiar with all the circumstances of this but certainly i fully recognize the claim you are making about very active presence of china in africa. >> sometimes we should do more pragmatic analysis, and not involve so much -- we need to balance it in order to compete with our chinese competitors, and it is almost every country,

chat or egypt or sub-saharan africa, i keep seeing the chinese in a heavy, heavy way and privately, i think it was the republic of congo some of the administrators said vapor for americans but the turtles -- for reasons in past history they have some of those countries that have embezzled and taken a lot of money from their own people so in some ways it is justified but my concern is interpreting internal social policies that are beyond the scope of what the united states should be doing and i want to express that. also in terms of the oil development, particularly in sub-saharan africa, there are countries -- companies in my district, baker hughes and halliburton, they kind of moved,

they would like to be in there. for and corruption act, there can be some misinterpretation of that lobbying applied to our own company and to that extent, there is a great deal of frustration on our side in houston, we would like to see more cooperation in deference to our own corporations if you could give them guidance, what they can do to facilitate more involvement in those countries would be a great boon, texas is already booming, no problems fracking in our state, beneficial to the united states, and i am alarmed that the rise, and obviously they have no restrictions whatsoever. they have no compunction about

paying beaters large sums of money to facilitate their red vantages. i turned back to my chairman now. >> it has to do with terrorist threats, in africa from al shabaab, something more significant. how does effort that integrate the infrastructure and the people, the personnel against terrorist attacks including cyberattacks, which we know could be devastating to and electrical power generating grant or any other out there. if you could perhaps be to that issue, protecting and hardening it to terrorism.

>> thank you for the question, chairman smith. i will defer to my colleagues specifically in relation to power africa and those engage quince there. i can tell you that the recognition that we encounter from energy companies and energy agencies, ministries when our international engagements to an ever-increasing degree recognize the importance of protecting infrastructure. one of the things the department of energy does is enter into cooperative engagements with key international partners. we do this at their expense, at the expense of the host country to help from identify vulnerabilities, plan their silient to any threat.e

it is an all hazard approach would do they want just talking about severe weather or cyberattack or physical attack, we have found this is an area where the united states is in a position to add value from our experience. i will have to defer to my colleagues whether that is being done, i simply don't know the answer myself. >> thank you for the question. i believe some of these exchanges depending on the topics that are of interest to energy regulators, the powerful operators, and these exchanges, i will send you details of having included those topics and the other important thing is the involvement of the private sector. a lot of private-sector investors have a lot of experience thinking through these risks and when they're investing from off shore,

looking all risks and that is another avenue on this topic, if they don't pay attention to these topics. we also count on them to be involved with local folks to look at that. is not integrated into development, and implementation. i want a double check on that. whether it is integrated also i will come back to it. >> i will say that in a sense, the early stage of developing the electricity grid systems in africa, we have the three east, west and south at different stages. i think in that process in working with the international financial institutions like the world bank and african development bank there's a lot

of consideration about the security and reliability issues, the development of the loan programs, for that kind of systems they put in place but clearly it is going to be an issue that is going to be with us as they begin to invest in developing from high-voltage transmission. >> with the pentagon or state department diplomatic security be incorporated? in nairobi, the accountability review board, 1998, terrorist attack. i will never forget assistant secretary carpenter said that they look for any vulnerability that nothing is off limits. i am paraphrasing of course.

and i chaired the hearings. out of that i wrote the embassy security act which -- had much more, finally implemented. and some of the remissions abroad. and those who wish us well, which is the right word. and the whole process of protecting in, that is not just against terrorism but earthquakes and natural disasters as well. the subcommittee and anything where we could be helpful in promoting even more of that. they are increasingly at risk.

the terrorists are not foolish. they will look for anything which will do maximum damage. anything you would like to say before we conclude? >> on behalf of my colleagues at the table and interagency, wheat reiterate our thanks to all of you for your leadership and interest. we are not going to collectively solve this challenge without your help and we very much appreciate it. >> it is a partnership. thank you for taking the lead and doing it so effectively. members of both sides of the aisle are appreciative of what you accomplished and will accomplish going forward. i would like to welcome our second panel beginning first with mr. walker williams who is president and ceo of leadership usa, alternative marketing access. mr. williams is a management consultant with three decades of

experience where he was working with governments and corporations and multilateral institutions. is areas of expertise and strategic advice include energy, infrastructure development, finance, management and communication. he has worked with the department of energy on the first u.s. effort energy ministerial and another at this past year in ethiopia. end note as well mr. williams is instrumental in bringing house and senate together, and the african diplomatic corps for historic and ongoing set of meetings that we have had to meet with the african ambassadors and others from all the african countries and i want to thank you for your leadership in making that happen. diane sutherland has been working in africa for the past 17 years. 13 of those years as president of egypt. ms. sutherland and to the oil and gas publishing business in

2001 and by 2002 was known as petroleum africa at magazine. he launched alternative energy africa magazine. officer services, as consultants to resource development, financial consultants of gone out -- of course. we will hook up with her by way of video. >> thank you, ranking member smith, chairman chris smith one, mr stockman. i appreciate the opportunity to come here this afternoon to talk about energy, something that is of critical importance not only to africa, it is important to the u.s. economy and i have some

prepared remarks i am going to refer to and submitted testimony. i am going to take a different take than the first panel because i am coming from the civil society side of the ledger and unwanted to take a few moments to talk about leadership africa. we do programs throughout africa. before that i was instrumental in working on the caribbean basin initiative and we worked on it. i want to say to you any civil society organization working in africa can only implement programs if there is synergy and power and electricity. we are kidding ourselves. my emphasis has always been on education and if we don't have electricity in the schools, we don't have computers, the kids aren't getting an education so by necessity, we have adopted

and started to work in and move into the energy sector in order to ensure the programs we put together can be leveraged and sustainable. chairman smith referred to some meetings we did several years ago but the background on fat was the african ambassadors have an african ambassador's group and they meet regularly once a month but they were not involved in deliberations so two or three years ago we took it upon ourselves to meet with them informally and we wanted to hear from the african ambassadors, the beneficiaries of these programs we talked about earlier this morning, what their take was, what they had on solutions to some of the challenges that are affecting them and they are confronting. we spent some time working on agoa.

it is up for reauthorization between now and september 15th ended is a very important initiative and this afternoon, we in the ngo community, civil society, we lindagoa to energy. you won't make the kind of changes and productivity you want from agoa because you don't have the energy and power for the metrics to solve the solutions so i am saying to you we link like the african ambassadors at the later summit. they link agoa and energy, the key priorities for them and i want to suggest when i mention him, prepared remarks, it is because they seek agoa link to

energy. that is how the amex--african ambassadors miss out and the way they look at those two issues. there is reference earlier this morning to the u.s./africa energy ministerial. leadership africa has the privilege of coordinating that meeting in ethiopia on behalf of the department of energy. i was happy to hear the u.s. department of energy and those who attended fog was successful and yes, we had 500 participants, 120 corporations, u.s. and african companies participate, and it was successful enough that when i came back, we need follow-up.

and we have 13 u.s. energy participating without there being follow-up. we announced beyond the grid at that session, and ranking member bash that earlier, we bring additional players and in prepared remarks, a small, minority and women don't business. and linking with their counterparts in africa. if you look at what goes on, with the african governments call localization. if you really want to work in our country, and you need to

find a way to train local citizens, and in our self-interest, there's a nice marriage between our small business community and the african business community. and to work together, under after a pet and mcc's program because what we referred to in the private sector of money sock and where there's money you know you will get paid and make sure that these programs encourage those companies, u.s. companies and others reaching out to their smaller business community to make sure there are opportunities for them to participate. also in my prepared remarks talk about something i think needs to be more focused on. and the way to really deal

effectively with energy, electricity and power is on a regional strategy, working with groupings that are in place in africa because in some sense you might find it is easier to take electricity from ghana and ship it into a neighboring country than it is to use it internally. i have urged in conversations with the 0 e, that is a strategy that if they can find a way to do that it starts to lead to some other things we called trade civilization. the electricity is so powerful that if you came to me and said we are going to have a reasonable approach on electricity it starts to get to trade civilization among but meters because it is something they share and need for, get them talking and breakdown the barriers around working across

borders in terms of these priorities. as you notice i didn't repeat the statistics. we know that over 600 million people in africa are without electricity. we know africa needs resources but the of this thing africa does need, it needs training and capacity development and that is something that the u.s. government and our agencies are very capable of providing and doing. we just need to make sure they continue to work to get the mike weir doing with power africa working group which is an excellent program. i am pushing hard for the program, lecture by africa program, because it stabilizes and put in place a long-term solution and i am also saying that we need to encourage and

listen to our african partners, we need to hear from them and look at more partnering relationships to maintain our competitive advantage. when the agency's -- i am a little bit involved. the agencies don't control any energy. they don't control any oil. and so you really do need to find a way to create public/private partnerships and be supportive of those entities that have access to these resources and to hear from them like i am listening to the african ambassadors and african heads, what will help them do a better job and create employment opportunities not only in the u.s. but in africa and with that, i will defer to other counterparty issues. >> thank you for the testimony. your statement will be made a

part of the record. in houston, texas, diane sutherland, you are recognized. >> this subcommittee, to testify at the hearing, asset energy future. and in both the continent, fossil fuel and alternative energy sectors and in parallel significant growth in international investment. there's an abundance of fossil fuels, the continent is solely underpower and access to clean affordable energy is a luxury to the population. despite the continent possessing 6% of global oil reserves and responsible for 10% of global production the majority do not have the