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Peak oil, a hypothetical point when global oil production maximizes and enters an irreversible decline, has been the holy grail of resource economics for decades: prized and just as elusive. Recently, technological development including increased digitization has altered conventional understandings associated with “peak oil”. Like other consumable resources, peak oil is grounded in reality: Oil is a finite natural resource produced over a geological timespan whereas demand continues to climb. However, peak oil could also become a self-fulfilling prophecy, inadvertently misinforming the public.
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The war in Ukraine will have demonstrated the impotence of the United Nations if a permanent member of the Security Council with full veto power becomes a rogue state without consequence. For the havoc it created, Russia must now be evicted from the UN.
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Much of China’s economic planning and domestic policy is energy focused and rests on a proven trifecta the USA would be well advised to examine and emulate where possible. First, massive investments in nuclear power, uranium refining, and modular reactors are set to make China the leading nuclear power in Asia. Second, China’s massive investment and dominance in every step of the rare earth mineral supply chain, especially coltan and lithium, is helping China monopolize the energy infrastructure of the future. Thirdly and finally, large investments in hydroelectricity (although this cannot be practically emulated in the US for lack of capacity, environmental, and permitting reasons). China’s much-publicized investment in renewables complements this trifecta but doesn’t feature centrally in any energy plans.
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Putin, in his Götterdämmerung moment, is fearmongering. In Stalinist propaganda language, he claims that the West “took off their masks and showed their true nature” … “for centuries [the West] wanted to colonize Russia, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union dreamed, but failed, to shatter it into pieces, set off ethnic groups against each other, and condemn them to indolence and extinction.” Like many dictators before him, Putin claims to be engaged in a preventive war to save his homeland.
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Despite Francis Fukuyama's infamous opinion, history certainly did not end. The imperial collapse was an unintended consequence of Gorbachev's desire to humanize socialism and save the USSR. He utterly failed in both tasks, but Russia and other Soviet republics were liberated from the Communist nightmare, and the world gained 30 years of relative peace, which is now coming to an end.
Since the historic meeting between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia's founder King Abdulaziz aboard the USS Quincy in 1945, America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has always been transactional: oil for security. Over the past fifteen years, ever since the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, the perceived failure of both sides to honor their terms of the bargain has produced a prisoner's dilemma of mutual distrust and uncertainty that leads each party to act selfishly and produces suboptimal choices for both. President Joe Biden's recent trip to Jeddah proved that he could not resolve this conundrum.
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On June 28th, leaders of the G7 announced that they agreed to explore the possibility of imposing a price cap on Russian oil to reduce Moscow’s energy revenues. While many view this as political exigency or a futile return to price controls, the truth is far more complex — with reverberations beyond the war in Ukraine or current energy woes.
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Earlier this month, the US Army launched a large floating solar array at Camp Mackall on Fort Bragg in North Carolina— the country’s largest domestic military base. This launch marks a critical moment for floating photovoltaics (FPVs) which have yet to attract mainstream attention in the USA.
Ukraine, a democratic ally with a transatlantic orientation, is fighting a domestically and internationally popular defensive conventional war against Russia, a former imperial master that is attempting to deny Ukraine peoplehood and statehood and that happens to be longtime rival to the U.S. With moral indignation driving a rare bipartisan U.S. foreign policy, there is an understandable interest in winning the peace – even before there is any peace to be won in Ukraine. To do that, policymakers must carefully refine the narratives and policies of Ukrainian aid.
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From many conversations held with Russian policymakers, we know that the vision which denies Ukraine peoplehood, and the Kremlin's resulting aggressions, are nothing new. This war's atrocities flow from the dark misapprehensions held by many Moscow elites concerning Russia's destiny, history and geopolitics.
Even before battlefields are silent, the battle for billions in Ukrainian reconstruction budgets has already begun. Top U.S. policy makers, including Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen championed the initial assistance package to Ukraine, which passed (86-11) in the Senate on May 19.
To understand the international agonies and opportunities that rising energy supply costs, exogenous shocks, increasing interest in renewables, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine present, there is no better example than Kazakhstan. It is singularly damaged by the current crises while simultaneously having so much potential to benefit from the global need for energy.
Government priorities feature prominently in discussions over the transition to renewable energy. Enthusiasm may abound for wind power, but if the United States is serious about its future, it must address critical supply chain disruptions and market-distorting foreign competition.
The United States is poised to become the world’s leading liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter by the year’s end. The US Energy Information Administration forecasts the country will export a whopping 12.2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) average to surpass Australia and Qatar for the top spot.
Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has provided the U.S. with a critical opportunity to diminish Russia’s influence over its neighbors by giving them technical assistance, economic development and security that neither Moscow nor Beijing can.
The White House walked back President Joe Biden's recent remarks in Poland calling for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin's removal from power. Coming from the American president, the statement was unnecessarily inflammatory amid a strategic environment fraught with dangers of unintended escalation.
During President Joe Biden's visit to Europe, the US has struck a deal with the EU to boost its liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply as the trade bloc seeks to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. The war in Ukraine highlighted the Old Continent's unsustainable Russian energy habit.
An impending political transition could alter Turkmenistan’s China-dominated foreign policy, one defined almost exclusively by energy exports and international seclusion.
Last week President Joe Biden announced a complete ban on Russian oil and gas imports – the latest in a series of debilitating sanctions meant to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for his crimes against Ukraine.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine intensifies, the Biden administration banned Russian oil and natural gas purchases. This move represents a departure from initial Western sanctions against the Kremlin, designed specifically to avoid interference in Russian energy flows – particularly to import-dependent Europe.
The forthcoming political change will affect vast energy resources, especially natural gas, in Turkmenistan, one of the most isolated and impoverished countries in Eurasia.
Since 2011, Libya has been suffering from a Hobbesian state of the war of all against all. Chaos, violence, and warfare massively impaired the north African energy giant’s oil and gas supplies.
As the risk of a conflict between Ukraine and Russia grows – one that would undoubtedly imperil European energy security – the Emir of Qatar is invited to visit President Biden at the White House at the end of this month to discuss opportunities for the country to supply liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe.
As the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine grows ever more likely, Berlin’s hesitancy to impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2 and other pressure points, such as SWIFT bank transfer system, erodes deterrence, and may invite Russian aggression.
In the first weeks of 2022, Kazakhstan experienced its most intense protests since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The causes of the turmoil in the country – like any major upheaval – are multi-faceted and were long in the making.
