U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to visit Ukraine next week

United States Secretary of Energy Rick Perry will visit Ukraine next week as part of his Eastern European tour.

“U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will visit Ukraine, Poland and other eastern European countries next week as the Trump administration seeks to offer them alternatives to buying coal and gas from Russia,“ the Department of Energy said in a release on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Perry will also visit Hungary and the Czech Republic on the trip. He will meet with government officials on topics from nuclear energy to cyber security and coal and liquefied natural gas exports.

The Trump administration is seeking foreign markets for coal as domestic consumption has dropped to the lowest level since 1983 due to closures of coal-fired power plants that are suffering from abundant, cheap supplies of natural gas.

In July, 2017 Centrenergo PJSC, one of the largest power companies in Ukraine, agreed to buy 700,000 tons of U.S. coal.