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 resources.

many of these countries earn incredible sums of revenue from hydrocarbons, agricultural and mining sectors invested in infrastructure. the company's opening up oil and gas potential are predominantly small to midsize independent firms with limited capital, security expiration conducted geophysical work and market to larger multinational firms to secure funding and minimize risk when it comes to drilling. to resolve those major discoveries over the past two decades and the opening -- in the past ten years significant oil and gas discoveries have been discovered in countries like ghana, kenya, mozambique, tanzania, uganda and others. improved technology enabled

these discoveries. with africa's developments offshore rivaling that in the gulf of mexico and natural gas was not long ago considered a nuisance by product in sub-saharan africa the resources utilized operations such as power generation and transported pipeline and also gas applications. it was discovered in sub-saharan accountant is reckoned with in the future. in mozambique and tanzania alone there is confidence of two areas together for the resources the me 192 cubic feet, expectations that proven reserves could more than double with future exploration. the shoulder and is not exclusive to north america. and a share of resources, shale

oil, gas and methane a receiving attention and a number of projects are afoot. as for alternative energy, there are hundreds of small-scale projects established in the works, not to mention large-scale projects on the drawing board. these translate into billions of dollars of investments, the sector making progress with renewable specific legislation, facilitating the industry. in addition to the major wind farm and solar projects that are under construction in egypt, ethiopia, kenya, morocco and south africa, the continent's hydropower resources are enormous with some estimates having 12% of the world's potential. the chinese are already heavily invested in hydropower and

funding $500 million, ethiopia is looking to develop loss of power and in the democratic republic of congo the world's largest implemented edition. not to be left out is geothermal. new thermal power plants by 2015 ended in fact it strategy would make it the no. one geothermal producer by 2033 has executed accordingly. having debt near-term tangible impact and improving the life of africans is small-scale projects that are very community waste solar with energy, solar and wind and biofuel applications. perhaps the greatest achievement has been seen in the

manufacturing sector, emerging to keep meet growing regional demand. the technology transfer will regard services to their community. in addition other small project allowed typical low-income villagers to become small-business owners and technology to their community. this development is a success story by any measure. in closing the hydrocarbon renewable energy initiative set forth by african governments and their global partners are paying huge dividends. much progress has been made but there's a long way to go to the standard of living american know-how and investments plan major role in making that happen. >> thank you for your testimony and your insight and expertise. i would like to yield to miss

that -- miss bass. >> of one to ask a few questions, representative stockman, concerns you raising about china, one of the first things we can do hopefully before lame duck is over is take care of two things, power africa over in the sand agoa. to the extent we can increase our participation because i know i heard from many african countries how much they do enjoy business with us that sometimes we put our own roadblocks up. so mr. williams, i was asking the first panel about power afric and its reach into urban areas in residential areas, not the commercial and also in the rural areas if you representing civil society. i wanted to know your take on

the question i asked the first panel. >> i believe -- is anecdotal to some extent but i do believe having come out of the u.s./africa ministerial, and looking at the effective role and amount of discussion we talked about with grids, the grids, getting electricity into rural areas and at the leaders' summit attended a session called africa rising and there were many entrepreneur real -- sustainable, going into rural communities and creating opportunities for young people to supply electricity and make a little bit of money to keep it going and keep their incentives up. is happening. it could be expedited but it is

happening and it is part of when you get beyond the grid, part of the agenda. >> would you like to respond to is at as well? >> the question was addressed to my colleague. >> i wonder about your opinions, efforts of reaching beyond commercial areas in urban, residential or rural areas. >> i am not familiar with that aspect of the industry. however, i do know that we appreciate american investments. and the life of china.

and the american center. and project are emanating from the united states while supplying of grid solutions such as the solar lanterns, or replacing kerosene with clean cooking so and they're quite receptive. >> go out of order and i will recognize the clean up. >> i am glad you are from houston. i represent houston. it is you know fracking was a critical part of george mitchell's portfolio and i think he really changed and revolutionized the world when he developed advanced fracking. i think we lost her. that is okay. i would like to ask mr. williams, in terms of on our side, free-market, can you tell me how is it that we are

competing, in what ways we can undo something to make it more beneficial for both sides. we have passed laws here that are very well intended but also it ends up impacting your industry or other industries in a negative way. i would like to know what laws we pass that are meant to be for good that are not. >> in response, to be undiplomatic i don't think anyone ever passes a law that they don't think is not going to work the way they intended to work. we will start with that premise. the thing that i feel we miss out on is that we don't really

listen to the beneficiaries. if 5 was to ask an african energy minister to pick up your conversation about china, where would they like -- who would they like to work with? unanimously it would be with the united states, but we do put in place, not the law but the policy of how the law will be implemented that creates obstacles and the obstacles in a global economy. oil is a global economy, supply and demand so no one country can control that whole industry but if we put hospitals up it goes to where there are less obstacles for they can get what they consider to be a fair shot but the preference for instance, if an energy minister comes here and they want to work on something and they would prefer to work with the department of energy oftentimes they have to go to the state department and

that means they have to involve the minister of foreign affairs and they would prefer to keep it in the energy house so some of the things we do create obstacles for us going forward. then there are issues within our agencies where we cannot be as supportive as the private sector would like because of regulations that are in place and the agencies themselves don't want to show favoritism to accompany a over company be so in some respects the playing field is not levels and our industries don't get the benefit of what we could do. >> we can look, no offense to the state department, the previous panel, you can look at the time and lank to discuss the pipeline here in the united states. it is unfortunate that the state department is interceding in free commerce, but i see it repeatedly, this was years ago,

i met with not the foreign minister but the energy minister, and that was a complaint 15, 18 years ago ended hasn't been resolved. i am not going to be here in january. i will work as an intern for congressman smith. this legislation to where we step back and allow companies to work together. it is absolutely true. and a fair shake, americans do something the chinese don't. and to train them in technology skills, and invest in infrastructure and the chinese are more parochial, and run the labor. they are locked up and don't get

to intermingle. i would request of you have time, policies, and diplomatic, they keep it secret. and down the road, could facilitate where we are doing a better job. and it is in order here. >> when you take power africa again, you don't say i want to turn on a switch. it takes years to develop these infrastructure projects. the country needs the electricity narrow. and we drop instant generators and tie it into the grid and building out the more permanent sustainable power supply. we are happy to respond with

those shortcuts thoughts that i had about how to be more affected the. >> i am so on your side. i go nuts when i visit, i have great compassion for him and they want what the rest of the world wants and i see our government is interceding in a way that is disruptive and harmful for the people we claim to want to help. i am thrilled that you dedicate your life to this and i appreciate the sacrifices you made and i apologize for the bureaucracy and inconsistency from our side. >> i appreciate that but i want a lot of help from the u.s. side, don't get me wrong. i have knocked on the door and received -- >> we can do better. when i go there and i hear the conversations i hear from

verisign, government officials, excuse the expression but it will use of profanity, i am really upset that we are time and time again shooting ourselves in the foot. with that i yield back to the chairman. >> a few final questions, thank you for your testimony and leadership. can you tell us if you have any insight how participants, especially non-government actors were selected for the ministerial. he made a good point about the importance of power africa having diaspora and businesses involved. who does the selection? is it selfs' election? people know it is coming and they get themselves on to a list of access for is the implementation? secondly, the e issue -- i wiis

ask this of miss sutherland but for most of my career in congress ought have been a proponent of waste energy initiatives believing it takes care of municipal garbage and produce clean energy and with modern technology being what it is, that smokestack at the end of the day is as pristine as it can possibly be. not always perfect obviously but the right controls and the right environmental safeguards it is cleaner. as the continent and country matriculate to in industrialized nation or continent there is going to be -- people want to cut corners. there will be much waste. industrial waste is one thing but municipal waste will grow in number and what do you do with it? i wonder how well you think power africa is incorporating the waste energy initiative as a way of powering up africa as part of a mix. let me also ask you i did ask

the earlier panel and i think they will get back with some insight. i am very worried about cybersecurity issues and terrorism. it doesn't take much if improper safeguards are not followed whereby a whole infrastructure can be demolished very quickly. you are still not on but miss sutherland has spoken about china and we all know that china demands a great deal of repayment, usually -- they get the oil and have access to that oil. we know countries like sudan and others are often weapons are in the mix in exchange for their raw materials especially oil. i am wondering if you feel we have competed well enough with the people's republic of china, as mr. stockman and others have

said the africans and you as well want to deal with the united states of america and with our private sector as well but if we are not in the game who do they turn to? we turned that corner, the chinese are still out competing us on the subcontinent? >> thank you, mr. chairman. your first question on the u.s./africa energy ministerial, leadership africa was responsible for the out reach in the marketing of that event that took place in ethiopia. the department of energy handled the government agency participation, agencies that did come to participate. i can tell you we reached out to everybody, we went to commerce department, got lists from all of the agencies and small business, large business so we made it inclusive and then we made it easy for even the african business men to attend

and different price referential so they had to pay something but it was a pittance so we made sure it was a meeting that had both africa and u.s. businesses participating and benefiting. it was on us. if there are complaints, its own leadership in africa, usa. your second question was waste to energy. we have seen over the years, we have seen a number of weights to energy, where there is the collection of waste and the cogeneration of waste turning it into energy. if they're very effective particularly with plastic, you will find it in egypt. there is a key huge project going on. we were working with another in geo and they had a competition on an annualized basis and the lot of people who won those competitions were dealing with

energy but also dealing with removing waste at the university level. it is attractive to young people but attractive to young people, and the communities, also have some money coming generating electricity is and/win for everybody. >> a couple of questions? anything to conclude? >> in response to my question about gaps, one of them was the urban sub national park, i asked whether or not it is -- are we reaching out to states and local governments? he said that is becoming more and more important and i wonder if you might speak to -- obviously work with the central government but don't the capital centric. looks to those other key players. you might want to expand on

that. the competition with china if you could touch on that one. finally, how do we measure success? when we see it, are there metrics that can be employed to say we have now seen such and such member of municipalities and people gain access to electricity. does anybody have a backdrop in mind to determine whether or not we are succeeding in this effort? >> picking up on the china question. it is the glass is half full/half-empty kind of thing. china has a different system than we have. they go at it differently. when you are talking to accompanied says we are a chinese company you don't know if it is a chinese company or if the company is partially owned by the government representing the government so when you put our companies into that mix it is hard to compete and there was

reference earlier to the foreign practices act and clarification and clarity when you are working with in the balance and everyone wants to work within the bounds the you are very clear that the activities you are undertaking on not going to put you of all of that law would be helpful. we can overcome china's advanced amount of financing they have available because we really make better partners. we are there for the long run and i think that the african governments understand that and we need to work to pick up on your second question, we need to move it out of the leadership, the heads of the ministries and government officials and move it to a level where they are talking to the business people who like businesspeople here can go talk to the government but they need the support and help and assistance we can provide

them. >> miss sutherland is back. i would like to ask her, you mentioned the issue in china, a more general question would be how we are competing with chinese initiatives and you also mentioned waste to energy which is something i just asked mr. williams when i came back on. how widespread are those projects which do two great things, produce energy and take care of municipal waste problem. and ticking time bombs, that is what we do to aquifers as they reach, and i appreciate it. >> we are working pretty well,

others have mentioned the transparency issue which is very big in africa, but there are only 17 or 18 countries. for those who have not signed up to it or have not met the requirements to be approved. and the no strings attached to it. and the african government, on the other hand, chinese technologies, vastly improved lagging behind american technology. in africa, and work with american service firms and oil

and gas exploration company, projects all over the continent, a small scale, i know of one project, waste to energy in the prison facility and that waste energy powers that facility. there is waste to energy and municipal waste to energy. and the very high potential in the continent and i believe you will see many more projects popping up as investment comes along and the technology transfer is made to these countries. >> thank you for coming back on line. >> sorry about that. technology is available sometimes. >> let me ask you, hydropower is a major factor in african energy

planning major projects like ethiopia's grand renaissance has regional implications that make it politically difficult. how do countries like ethiopia and egypt deal with conflict over such major power and water projects? the background in egypt? >> if there are basically governmental policies, i don't think but ethiopia project will make it as far as it has if it weren't for the arab spring and resulting in egypt. generally, you would have seen that project not go as far as it has had egypt not had difficulty, and debate among the country, and find egypt in the

not too distant future trying to go in. >> to both of you ten years from now can you make any kind of estimate or projection as to how many people on the subcontinent will have access to electricity? >> in the next decade? i don't see a huge increase. maybe a 15% increase in the next decade if the major alternative energy project comes into fruition like geothermal and hydropower. >> mr. williams? >> i have to share her assessment that there's not going to be a substantial number of people with access to elected city in africa if we stay on the current levels that we are on

right now. it is estimated by 24 the, you may have 500 people on the continent. >> that is right now? >> approximately. >> thank you. we need to accelerate our efforts and we end on that point. if you would like to add -- >> i want to thank you for the opportunity to be here and to testify. i am hopeful that some of the things that i said will be back to you and hope to applaud your leadership. >> thank you very much. >> any further comments. the hearing is adjourned, thank you very much.

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