Geopolitics of Energy Project

This week’s OPEC meeting about a global production cut is in crisis before it has even begun. Pre-summit discussions with non-member oil producers such as Russia were canceled. The Saudi Arabian government now warns that members may leave Wednesday’s talks in Vienna empty-handed -- an outcome that would be sure to trouble markets.

This paper provides an overview of the debate surrounding the Nabucco pipeline’s cancellation. Conventional wisdom holds that Nabucco failed for political reasons, but the real cause of its failure was the emergence of two more economically viable pipeline plans.

Several fellows from different Belfer Center programs and projects described insights they’ve gained or lessons they’ve learned during their fellowships at the Center.

One of the great questions of energy geopolitics over the last few years has been the nature and extent of Russia’s shift in export strategy away from Europe. This question necessitates a thorough investigation of Gazprom’s reaction to a set of factors that threaten its position in the European gas market and, in turn, an assessment of key factors driving future European supply structures. This paper aims to do just that; it explores the extent to which this new Russian export strategy is real, and to the extent that it is, it investigates the drivers of the new approach in terms of timing, substance, and the prospects for this new approach to succeed. To this end, this discussion paper relies on a set of background interviews with policy makers, industry representatives, and analysts in Russia and Brussels.

Stalling progress in European, Chinese and Latin American shale has been attributed to difficult geological formations and lacking data. Yet, ‘above ground’ factors matter in the extractive industries as much as geology. It is policies, regulation and institutional settings that determines the success or failure of a contested, risk bound technology such as fracking. This article suggests that a regulatory governance agenda may offer novel insights into shale gas as a policy phenomenon.

Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns.

Putin's third presidential term started in May of 2012. He had already served two consecutive terms in 2000-2008, switching places with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in 2008-2012. Putin's first two terms composed a period of sustained growth, which provided empirical ammunition against criticism of his model. The freshman year of Medvedev's presidency coincided with the onset of a global economic crisis that exposed Putin's model to its first serious test.

The agreement to freeze production was geopolitical not economic, writes Meghan O’Sullivan in the Financial Times.

Leonardo Maugeri explains why oil production continued to grow despite the collapse of oil prices since November 2014. Investment in production capacity did not abate. In point of fact, oil producers are just beginning to see results from recently completed or soon-to-be-completed investments – as he suggested in 2012. This momentum means today’s oil surpluses will grow, putting further downward pressure on prices.

Will global demand catch up to absorb this glut? It seems unlikely.

This article considers a number of political explanations for gas policy and shows that it is usually the economic interests of big energy firms that frequently take precedence, although these are often ignored and hidden as factors.