Asia & the Pacific

During our holiday newsletter hiatus, I finally had time to read Meghan O'Sullivan's book (pictured above) about how the shale boom is shaking up global oil-and-gas markets — a phenomenon that has broad and important geopolitical effects.

The boom benefits U.S. global posture and economy, but O'Sullivan warns that policymakers cannot be complacent and must take steps to harness its geo-strategic benefits while mitigating environmental risks.

Windfall is the boldest profile of the world’s energy resources since Daniel Yergin’s The Quest. Harvard professor and former Washington policymaker Meghan L. O’Sullivan reveals how fears of energy scarcity have given way to the reality of energy abundance. This abundance is transforming the geo-political order and boosting American power.

The big international oil companies are going through a crisis little noticed by analysts and the markets. It is a crisis of results and of vision.

Simply put, the majors — companies like Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP — aren’t growing. They have discovered relatively little oil in recent years despite increasing investment. They also have lost their exclusive lock on the skills that made them indispensable to oil-producing countries.

“We are finally poised to control our own energy future,” said President Barack Obama in his State of the Union message, noting the drastic increase in American energy production from unconventional oil and gas resources.

Controlling our energy future means more than just producing a greater amount of our own energy. It also means harnessing this energy renaissance to meet our global geopolitical needs. We’ve begun to reap the many economic benefits this boom brings—such as easing the trade deficit and lowering carbon emissions. But we have only started to appreciate how this energy renaissance affects our larger strategic environment. And, not surprisingly, many readers of the tea leaves have confused reality with desire, by hoping more energy at home will mean keeping out of the volatile politics and economics of the Middle East.

Over the past decade, countries with emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, India, Mexico, China, and South Africa have become important global players in political and economic domains. In 2007, these six countries consumed and produced more than a third of the world's energy and emitted about 35 percent of total greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. The changing global energy landscape has important implications for energy technology innovation (ETI) nationally and internationally. However, there is limited information available about the investments and initiatives that are taking place by the national governments within these countries. This paper presents the information available on energy RD&D investments in the emerging economies. 

This is the first handbook to provide a global policy perspective on energy, bringing together a diverse range of international energy issues in one volume.

Americans are pleasantly surprised about how their energy fate appears to have changed, in such a short time, with little notice or anticipation. Within the last five years, both actual US production of oil and gas and projections for future American production have changed dramatically. Whereas in the mid-2000s, experts predicted that the US should anticipate a future of severe dependence on imported natural gas, in 2012 Washington is debating the pros and cons of becoming an exporter of this resource. Even more quietly, domestic production of oil has increased, in large part due to the development of the tight oil in the Bakken formation in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford in Texas.