Diplomacy and International Politics

On June 23 and 24, twenty five experts met at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government under the auspices of the Geopolitics of Energy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The group, which included experts from academia, the financial sector, government, and the energy industry, spent an evening and the following full day discussing and debating the possible energy implications of a nuclear deal between the P5+1 and Iran.

Fears that events in Iraq will send global oil prices soaring have abated. Yet, the crisis has potentially huge implications for oil. Under any conceivable outcome to the current situation, oil production from Iraq will fail to meet recent expectations. The reason for this dire prognosis is that politics – not security or logistics – will be the biggest determinant of Iraq’s oil trajectory in the years ahead.