Oil And Security

The second, completely updated edition of this widely read and respected guide is the most authoritative survey available on the perennial question of energy security. Energy and Security gathers today's topmost foreign policy and energy experts and leaders to assess how the United States can integrate its energy and national security interests. This edition offers fresh analysis and insight into • Fundamental shifts in the global energy balance • The revolution in shale gas and oil • New energy frontiers, from ultra deepwater to the Arctic • The rising agenda of safety concerns across the energy complex • Energy poverty • Infrastructure for modernizing power grids • Climate security in the current political and economic environment The contributors offer a lively discussion of the challenges and opportunities presented by these changes and how they affect national security and regional politics around the globe.

Oil and natural gas, which today account for over 60% of the world’s energy supply, are often produced by offshore platforms. One third of all oil and gas comes from the offshore sector. However, offshore oil and gas installations are generally considered intrinsically vulnerable to deliberate attacks. The changing security landscape and concerns about the threats of terrorism and piracy to offshore oil and gas installations are major issues for energy companies and governments worldwide. But, how common are attacks on offshore oil and gas installations? Who attacks offshore installations? Why are they attacked? How are they attacked? How is their security regulated at the international level? How has the oil industry responded? This timely and first of its kind publication answers these questions and examines the protection and security of offshore oil and gas installations from a global, industry-wide and company-level perspective. Looking at attacks on offshore installations that occurred throughout history of the offshore petroleum industry, it examines the different types of security threats facing offshore installations, the factors that make offshore installations attractive targets, the nature of attacks and the potentially devastating impacts that can result from attacks on these important facilities. It then examines the international legal framework, state practice and international oil and gas industry responses that aim to address this vital problem. Crucially, the book includes a comprehensive dataset of attacks and security incidents involving offshore oil and gas installations entitled the Offshore Installations Attack Dataset (OIAD). This is an indispensable reference work for oil and gas industry professionals, company security officers, policy makers, maritime lawyers and academics worldwide.

The importance of oil for national military-industrial complexes appeared more clearly than ever in the Cold War. This volume argues that the confidential acquisition of geoscientific knowledge was paramount for states, not only to provide for their own energy needs, but also to buttress national economic and geostrategic interests and protect energy security. By investigating the postwar rebuilding and expansion of French and Italian oil industries from the second half of the 1940s to the early 1960s, this book shows how successive administrations in those countries devised strategies of oil exploration and transport, aiming at achieving a higher degree of energy autonomy and setting up powerful oil agencies that could implement those strategies. However, both within and outside their national territories, these two European countries had to confront the new Cold War balances and the interests of the two superpowers.

Increasing petroleum costs, supply uncertainties, political factors, and environmental damage are forcing a radical move towards alternatives. This book provides an up-to-date review of the socio-economic, political, and environmental factors forcing a new approach to global energy developments and use. It reviews alternative fuel and energy conversion technology developments that will help create a cleaner and more secure future.

Oil stands alone among primary commodities in its potential for sending economic shock waves across the world. The value of oil production is one and a half times the world's total production of food grains; demand is unresponsive to price in the short run; and the world's oil resources are heavily concentrated in the Middle East, where political disturbances have been chronic and oil supply is subject to sudden interruption. Together, these factors have made oil a virtual rogue elephant in the world economy since 1973. This book discusses the oil shocks of 1973-74, 1979-80, and the "minishock" of 1990-91, and examines the possibility of oil shocks over the next twenty years. The authors assess the world market outlook on the basis of underlying trends on world oil supply and demand. They take into account prospects for investment in oil production in the Persian Gulf states, the former Soviet republics, and Latin America; environmental factors and policies; and political uncertainties in the Middle East.