Energy Secretary Rick Perry said he had no plans to resign now or next month, denying a report that he was expected to announce his resignation in November, Reuters reports.

Said Perry: “No. I’m here, I’m serving.”

He added: “They’ve been writing the story for at least nine months now. One of these days they will probably get it right, but it’s not today, it’s not tomorrow, it’s not next month.”

“Energy Secretary Rick Perry has been a near-ghost in Washington, adhering almost too well to the first rule of working for President Trump — never overshadow the boss,” CNN reports.

“Perry generates so few headlines that it’s easy to forget the longest-tenured Texas governor and two-time Presidential candidate is a Cabinet official.”

“Unlike several of his colleagues, Perry has avoided negative attention or scandal. He has also not run afoul of Trump on any major issue, and he’s maintained good relationships on Capitol Hill. He’s been a loyal soldier and a bit player in a show where Trump is the star.”

Energy Secretary Rick Perry is planning to leave the Trump administration, but his departure is not imminent, Reuters reports.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry claimed that fossil fuels can help prevent sexual assault, NBC News reports.

Said Perry: “But also from the standpoint of sexual assault, when the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts. So from the standpoint of how you really affect people’s lives, fossil fuels is going to play a role in that. I happen to think it’s going to play a positive role.”

“Energy Secretary Rick Perry took a chartered jet to Ohio last week, according to an airport management company, the day before fellow Cabinet member Tom Price resigned over his use of private charter flights for government business,” Reuters reports.

Michael Lewis has a must-read piece on the Department of Energy — from the “ceremonial and bizarre” role of energy secretary Rick Perry to the Trump administration’s apparent total disinterest in the agency.

In his confirmation hearings to run the department Perry confessed that when he called for its elimination he hadn’t actually known what the Department of Energy did—and he now regretted having said that it didn’t do anything worth doing.

The question on the minds of the people who currently work at the department: Does he know what it does now? D.O.E. press secretary Shaylyn Hynes assures us that “Secretary Perry is dedicated to the missions of the Department of Energy.” And in his hearings, Perry made a show of having educated himself. He said how useful it was to be briefed by former secretary Ernest Moniz. But when I asked someone familiar with those briefings how many hours Perry had spent with Moniz, he laughed and said, “That’s the wrong unit of account.” With the nuclear physicist who understood the D.O.E. perhaps better than anyone else on earth, according to one person familiar with the meeting, Perry had spent minutes, not hours. “He has no personal interest in understanding what we do and effecting change,” a D.O.E. staffer told me in June. “He’s never been briefed on a program—not a single one, which to me is shocking.”

Energy Secretary Rick Perry “optimistically discussed expanding American coal exports to Ukraine and other energy matters during a lengthy phone call this month with a Russian prankster who Perry thought was Ukraine’s prime minister,” Reuters reports.

“Perry actually was talking with comedians known in Russia for targeting celebrities and politicians with audacious stunts… During the 22-minute call on July 19, Perry, whose department oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons program, discussed a range of topics in a business-like tone, including sanctions against Russia and helping Ukraine develop oil and gas.”

The audio from the call is online.