US Energy Secretary Chris Wright urged the International Energy Agency on Wednesday to abandon its work on climate change and focus instead on its founding mission.

Wright threatened last year to pull the US out of the IEA – which was founded to coordinate responses to major disruptions of supplies after the 1973 oil crisis – unless it reformed the way it operates.

The IEA was created "to focus on energy security," Wright said on Wednesday at a ministerial meeting of the agency in Paris.

"That mission is beyond critical, and I'm here to plead to all the members (of the IEA) that we need to keep the focus of the IEA on this absolutely life-changing, world-changing mission of energy security," the former fracking magnate said.

He said he wanted to get support from "all the nations in this noble organization to work with us, to push the IEA to drop the climate. That's political stuff."

Speaking earlier, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol insisted that the Paris-based agency was "data-driven."

"We are a nonpolitical organization," he added.

The IEA produces monthly reports on oil demand and supply as well as annual world energy outlooks that include data on the growth of solar and wind energy, among other analyses.

Wright praised Birol for reinserting a scenario that looked at the growth of oil and gas demand -- which had been dropped from the reports in 2020 – in last November's annual outlook.

In an interview with AFP on Tuesday, Wright said the IEA has "made some first steps" to reform but still has "a long way to go."

But the US energy chief also pressed on with his criticism, telling reporters before the start of Wednesday's meetings: "The IEA has been infected with sort of a climate cult that's about energy subtraction."