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A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet displaying an "Energy Security" logo.

Energy security is a term for an association between national security and the availability of natural resources for energy consumption. Access to cheap energy has become essential to the functioning of modern economies. However, the uneven distribution of energy supplies among countries has led to significant vulnerabilities.

Energy Security Threats[link]

The modern world relies on a vast energy supply to fuel everything from transportation to communication, to security and health delivery systems. Perhaps most alarmingly, peak oil expert Mike Ruppert has claimed that for every calorie of food produced in the industrial world, ten calories of oil and gas energy are invested in the forms of fertilizer, pesticide, packaging, transportation, and running farm equipment.^[1] Energy plays an important role in the national security of any given country as a fuel to power the economic engine.^[2] Some sectors rely on energy more heavily than others; for example, the Department of Defense relies on petroleum for approximately 77% of its energy needs.^[3] Threats to energy security include the political instability of several energy producing countries, the manipulation of energy supplies, the competition over energy sources, attacks on supply infrastructure, as well as accidents, natural disasters, rising terrorism, and dominant countries reliance to the foreign oil supply.^[4]

Foreign oil supplies are vulnerable to unnatural disruptions from in-state conflict, exporters’ interests, and non-state actors targeting the supply and transportation of oil resources. The political and economic instability caused by war or other factors such as strike action can also prevent the proper functioning of the energy industry in a supplier country. For example, the nationalization of oil in Venezuela has triggered strikes and protests in which Venezuela’s oil production rates have yet to recover.^[5] Exporters may have political or economic incentive to limit their foreign sales or cause disruptions in the supply chain. Since Venezuela’s nationalization of oil, anti-American Hugo Chavez has threatened to cut off supplies to the United States more than once.^[6] The 1973 oil embargo against the U.S. is a historical example in which oil supplies were cut off to the US due to US support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. This has been done to apply pressure during economic negotiations - such as during the Russia-Belarus energy dispute. Terrorist attacks targeting oil facilities, pipelines, tankers, refineries, and oil fields are so common they are referred to as “industry risks”.^[7] Infrastructure for producing the resource is extremely vulnerable to sabotage.^[8] One of the worst risks to oil transportation is the exposure of the five ocean chokepoints, like the Iranian controlled Strait of Hormuz. Anthony H. Cordsman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington warns, “It may take only one asymmetric or conventional attack on a Ghawar [Saudi oil field] or tankers in the Strait of Hormuz to throw the market into a spiral."^[9]

COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH SECURING ENERGY: US foreign strategy is committed to securing access to oil, but as a result of the vulnerability of oil supplies to disruptions significant costs are incurred: economic, military, and diplomatic. First, the US bears a significant economic burden through securing oil. Putting a dollar amount on the military resources devoted to securing energy is complex. One method reports the costs of securing access to oil in 2009 was $215.4 billion dollars.^[10] According to the 2008 Foreign Trade Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau, United States annual oil debt has reached $386 billion, which is greater than our $266 billion debt with China.^[11] Every hour $13 million are spent on imported oil.^[12] Military and diplomatic costs associated with securing access to oil also carry a significant burden. In May 2011 CNN reported that sixteen people, including five children, died when an oil tanker carrying fuel for NATO exploded in Pakistan. A remote-controlled bomb was planted under the vehicle. When the vehicle exploded, the oil caught fire and took the lives of NATO military and innocent civilians.^[13] Dennis McGinn, a member of the Military Advisory Board, composed of senior retired admirals and generals has argued that having troops spread out around the globe to ensure the flow of oil spreads the military thin; and the great risks assumed by U.S. troops reduce combat effectiveness by putting our troops more directly and more often in harm’s way. ^[14] According to Dennis McGinn, the current strategy to secure oil “cripples our foreign policy and weakens U.S. international leverage.” ^[15]

Funding the wars against the US:

One in five barrels of oil imported into the U.S. comes from countries that the State Department considers to be hostile to the U.S., and “dangerous and unstable,” therefore directly transferring large amounts of funds to these hostile regimes.^[16]

“Despite U.S. laws against purchasing oil from Iran, the global demand for oil — aided by U.S. consumption habits — helps to drive up the global price of oil and line the pockets of the Iranian regime,” Jonathan Powers, Chief Operating Officer, said in the report Oil Addiction: Fueling Our Enemies.^[17]

According to an article by the RAND Corporation, oil export revenues are used to finance terrorist groups, like Hamas and Hizballah. Former CIA director, Jim Woosley reports, “Except for our own Civil War, this [the war on terror] is the only war that we have fought where we are paying for both sides. We pay Saudi Arabia $160 billion for its oil, and $3 or $4 billion of that goes to the Wahhabis, who teach children to hate. We are paying for these terrorists with our SUVs.”^[18]

New threats to energy security have emerged in the form of the increased world competition for energy resources due to the increased pace of industrialization in countries such as India and China. Although still a minority concern, the possibility of price rises resulting from the peaking of world oil production is also starting to attract the attention of at least the French government.^[19]Increased competition over energy resources may also lead to the formation of security compacts to enable an equitable distribution of oil and gas between major powers. However, this may happen at the expense of less developed economies. The Group of Five, precursors to the G8, first met in 1975 to coordinate economic and energy policies in the wake of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, a rise in inflation and a global economic slowdown.^[20] NATO leaders meeting in Bucharest in April 2008 may discuss the possibility of using the military alliance "as an instrument of energy security." One of the possibilities include placing troops in the Caucasus region to police oil and gas pipelines.^{[21][dated info]}

Energy sector[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The energy sector for not only the U.S. but for many other countries fuel the economies in the 21st century. Without these resources and the money coming in from them health and overall welfare will be risked world-wide. Oil has become what oxygen is to humans but for the economy. As the resources near peak production levels the U.S. economy will be threatened and will force other resources and big oil producing companies to start researching new sources of fuel to help revitalize the economy.

The energy infrastructure is divided into three interrelated segments: electricity, petroleum and natural gas. Natural gas although very efficient is in decline and becomes very hard to harvest and very dangerous to store. Electricity when produced is very harmful to the environment due to all the greenhouse gases leaked into the atmosphere. With these concerns the U.S. and other countries including Russia and China have been researching new methods of creating electricity in a more clean way.

Long term security[link]

Long term measures to increase energy security center on reducing dependence on any one source of imported energy, increasing the number of suppliers, exploiting native fossil fuel or renewable energy resources, and reducing overall demand through energy conservation measures. It can also involve entering into international agreements to underpin international energy trading relationships, such as the Energy Charter Treaty in Europe. All the concern coming from security threats on oil sources long term security measures will help reduce the future cost of importing and exporting fuel into and out of countries without having to worry about harm coming to the goods being transported.^{[citation needed]}

The impact of the 1973 oil crisis and the emergence of the OPEC cartel was a particular milestone that prompted some countries to increase their energy security. Japan, almost totally dependent on imported oil, steadily introduced the use of natural gas, nuclear power, high-speed mass transit systems, and implemented energy conservation measures,^[22] It has become one of the world leaders in the use of renewable energy.^[23] The United Kingdom began exploiting North Sea oil and gas reserves, and became a net exporter of energy into the 2000s.^{[citation needed]}

In other countries energy security has historically been a lower priority. The United States, for example, has continued to increase its dependency on imported oil^[22] although, following the oil price increases since 2003, the development of biofuels has been suggested as a means of addressing this.^[24]

Increasing energy security is also one of the reasons behind a block on the development of natural gas imports in Sweden. Greater investment in native renewable energy technologies and energy conservation is envisaged instead. India is carrying out a major hunt for domestic oil to decrease its dependency on OPEC, while Iceland is well advanced in its plans to become energy-independent by 2050 through deploying 100% renewable energy.^{[citation needed]}

Short term security[link]

Petroleum[link]

Petroleum or otherwise known as "crude oil" has become the resource most used by countries all around the world including Russia, China and the United States of America. With all the oil wells located around the world energy security has become a main issue to ensure the safety of the petroleum that is being harvested. In the middle east oil fields become main targets for sabotage because of how heavily countries rely on oil. Many countries hold strategic petroleum reserves as a buffer against the economic and political impacts of an energy crisis. All 28 members of the International Energy Agency hold a minimum of 90 days of their oil imports, for example.^[25][26]

The value of such reserves was demonstrated by the relative lack of disruption caused by the 2007 Russia-Belarus energy dispute, when Russia indirectly cut exports to several countries in the European Union.^{[citation needed]}

Due to the theories in peak oil and need to curb demand, the United States military and Department of Defense had made significant cuts, and have been making a number of attempts to come up with more efficient ways to use oil.^[27]

Natural gas[link]

Compared to petroleum, reliance on imported natural gas creates significant short term vulnerabilities. Many European countries saw an immediate drop in supply when Russian gas supplies were halted during the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute in 2006.^{[citation needed]}

Natural gas has been a viable source of energy in the world. Consisting of mostly methane natural gas is produced using two methods, biogenic and thermogenic. Biogenic comes from methogenic organisms located in marshes and landfills where thermogenic comes from buried material that is heated up from the earths core. Russia is the current leading country in production of natural gases.

One of the biggest problems currently with natural gas is the ability to storage and transport it. With its low density it becomes harder to have pipelines in North America to transport enough natural gas as the demand increases. These pipelines are reaching near capacity and even at full capacity do not produce the amount of gas needed.^{[citation needed]}

Nuclear power[link]

Sources of uranium delivered to EU utilities in 2007, from the 2007 Annual report of the Euratom Supply Agency

Uranium for nuclear power is mined and enriched in diverse and "stable" countries. These include Canada (23% of the world's total in 2007), Australia (21%), Kazakhstan (16%) and more than 10 other countries. Uranium is mined and fuel is manufactured significantly in advance of need. Nuclear fuel is considered by some to be a relatively-reliable power source, though a debate over the timing of peak uranium does exist.

Although a very viable resource nuclear power comes under fire a lot of times because of the danger that people associate to it, nuclear power is stable but if something were to happen there are very little options that have been proposed to fix that problem. Another big factor in the debate with nuclear power is that many people or companies do not want this high waste energy solution near them due to possible radiation leaks, nuclear runoff into streams and lakes and also the nuclear power plant ruins how appealing a city or state looks to other people in the country.

Currently nuclear power powers a small fraction of the worlds electricity, but an even smaller fraction to the United States electricity. The incorporation of nuclear power can be seen through many different uses, for example there are currently nuclear powered ships that the navy uses to transport materials, soldiers and other resources. Three of the ships names are the USS Bainbridge, USS Longbeach and the USS Enterprise.

Renewable energy[link]

The deployment of renewable technologies usually increases the diversity of electricity sources and, through local generation, contributes to the flexibility of the system and its resistance to central shocks. For those countries where growing dependence on imported gas is a significant energy security issue, renewable technologies can provide alternative sources of electric power as well as displacing electricity demand through direct heat production. Renewable biofuels for transport represent a key source of diversification from petroleum products.^[28]

As the resources that have been so crucial to survival in the world to this day start declining in numbers, countries will begin to realize that the need for renewable fuel sources will be as vital as ever. With the production of new types of energy including, solar, geothermal, hydro-electric, biofuel and wind power. With the amount of sun that hits the world in one hour there is enough energy to power the world for one year. With the addition of solar panels all around the world a little less pressure is taken off the need to produce more oil.

Geothermal can potentially lead to other sources of fuel, if companies would take the heat from the inner core of the earth to heat up water sources we could essentially use the steam creating from the heated water to power machines, this option is one of the cleanest and efficient options. Hydro-electric which has been incorporated into many of the dams around the world produces a lot of energy and is very easy to produce the energy as the dams control the water that is allowed through seams which power turbines located inside of the dam. Bio-fuels have been researched using many different sources including ethanol and algae, these options are substantially cleaner than the consumption of petroleum.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

Energy portal

By area

• Category:Energy policy by country
• Energy security of the People's Republic of China
• Energy security of Afghanistan
• U.S. Energy Independence
• Energy Security Act
• Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007
• Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security

Economic

• Energy price
• Energy supply
• Oil Shockwave
• Peak oil

Strategic

• Eco-nationalism
• Energy independence
• National security
• Strategic reserve
• Global strategic petroleum reserves
• Energy superpower
• Energy and Environmental Security Initiative
• Energy security and renewable technology
• High Speed Rail
• International Risk Governance Council
• Nationalization of oil supplies
• International Energy Forum

References[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (December 2010)

• Journal of Energy Security
• Institute for the Analysis of Global Security: Energy Security Research
• United States Energy Security Council
• Energy and Environmental Security Initiative (EESI)
• NATO and Energy Security
• Closing the Gap Between Energy & National Security Policy
• Energy Security as National Security: Defining Problems Ahead of Solutions
• High Speed Rail and Energy Security
• Energy Security Implications of the US-India Nuclear Deal
• Collective Energy Security: A New Approach for Europe
• Canadian Arctic Energy Security
• Can The United States Drill Its Way to Energy Security?
• Tax Oil Organization
• Energy Export Databrowser - A visual review of production and consumption trends for individual nations; data from the British Petroleum Statistical Review

Additional sources[link]

• http://pzl1.ed.ornl.gov/energysecurity.html
• http://www.iea.org/subjectqueries/keyresult.asp?KEYWORD_ID=4103 3. *http://www.energysecuritycouncil.org/default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
• http://www.springerlink.com/content/f23j03184744317x/
• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V2W-4CPD725-1&_user=650596&_coverDate=11/01/2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1537299852&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000035098&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=650596&md5=51b30652a51ac482c89feba38bae1fe3&searchtype=a
• http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2iVbs4Myu_AC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=energy+security+&ots=Fph0UBErDp&sig=uIt6LTYN1S9AfqElryWXpzQ9zTo#v=onepage&q&f=false

Daniel Yergin
At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, 2012
Born	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Residence	Washington, DC
Occupation	Author
Awards	Pulitzer Prize (92)
Website
www.DanielYergin.com

Daniel Howard Yergin (born February 6, 1947) is a Pulitzer Prize winning American author, speaker, and economic researcher. Yergin is the co-founder and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy research consultancy that is now part of IHS Inc.. He is best known as author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power; and The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World.

Early life and education[link]

Born in Los Angeles, California to a Chicago Tribune reporter father and a mother who was a sculptor and painter, Yergin attended Beverly Hills High School.^[1] He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1968, where he served on the board of the Yale Daily News, and was a founder of The New Journal. He earned his Ph.D. in International Relations (1974) from Cambridge University where he was a Marshall Scholar. He also holds honorary doctoral degrees from Colorado School of Mines, University of Houston, and the University of Missouri.

Career[link]

From 1977 through 1980, he was a Lecturer at the Harvard Business School and, until 1983, a Lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He founded Cambridge Energy Research Associates(CERA) in 1982 with the purchase of a $7.00 file cabinet from Goodwill.^[2] In 2004, CERA was acquired by the information company IHS Inc. In addition to being chairman of IHS CERA, he is also executive vice president of IHS.^[3]

Books[link]

Yergin's first book, Shattered Peace, focused on the origins of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. It received the book award from the National Historical Society. Shattered Peace was partly based upon Yergin’s Ph.D. dissertation.

He co-authored and co-edited with Robert Stobaugh, Energy Future: the Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School, which was a New York Times bestseller.^[4]

Daniel Yergin is best known for The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, a number-one bestseller that won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1992 and the Eccles Prize for the best book on economics for a general audience.^[5] The book was adapted into a PBS/BBC mini-series seen by more than 20 million viewers. Yergin was awarded the 1997 United States Energy Award for "lifelong achievements in energy and the promotion of international understanding."

His next book was Russia 2010 and What It Means for the World, written with Thane Gustafson, which provided scenarios for the development of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was followed by The Commanding Heights: the Battle for the World Economy, written with Joseph Stanislaw. Which started out as a 60,000 word essay, and described in narrative form the struggle over the “frontier” between governments and markets and the rise of globalization.^[6] It was made into a prize-winning six-hour PBS/BBC television series. Yergin was executive producer and host of the series. Yergin interviewed many high profile people including Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Gordon Brown, Newt Gingrich, and Robert Rubin, as well as prominent economists.

In September 2011, Yergin published his 804-page The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, which continued his history of the global oil industry but also addressed energy security, natural gas, electric power, climate change and the search for renewable sources of energy.

All of Yergin's books were drafted in long-hand.^[7]

Peak oil controversy[link]

While Yergin has been invited by the press – including Fox Business^[8], The New York Times^[9] , Financial Times^[10] , and the Wall Street Journal,^[11] – to speak on energy issues, his predictions and assertions have been attacked by critics from a peak oil perspective.^[12][13] For example, Jean Laherrere contends that Yergin's predictions on energy production and prices have omitted key facts, leading Yergin to draw incorrect conclusions.^[14]. Others have criticized his predictions and that of CERA.^[15] An essay that Yergin published on the peak oil controversy in the Wall Street Journal aroused further criticism from the peak oil community.^[16] He also addressed peak oil in a chapter in The Quest entitled “Is the World Running Out of Oil?”

Books by Daniel Yergin[link]

• Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Reprints: Penguin, 1978, 1980, ISBN 0-395-27267-X; Penguin, rev. & updated, 1990, ISBN 0-14-012177-3.
• The Dependence Dilemma (Harvard Studies in International Affairs 43): Gasoline Consumption and America's Security. University Press of America, 1980. ISBN 0-87674-047-6. Reprint: Rowman & Littlefield, 1984, ISBN 0-8191-4056-2.
• 1989 Fuels report hearing on the oil price forecast and scenario planning (CEC contract). Cambridge Energy Research Associates, 1989.
• The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Cambridge Energy Research Associates, 1990.
• The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. ISBN 0-671-50248-4. Reprint: Simon & Schuster, 1992, ISBN 0-671-79932-0.
• Gasoline and the American People. Cambridge Energy Research Associates, 1991.
• The Euro: Remaking Europe's Future: The New Europe poses enormous challenges — for the welfare state, for companies, and for political leaders. Cambridge Energy Associates, 1998.
• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. Penguin Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-59420-283-4.

Books co-authored by Daniel Yergin[link]

• Energy Future: The Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School. New York: Random House, 1979. ISBN 0-394-50163-2. Reprints: Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-394-29349-5; Knopf, 3rd ed., 1982, ISBN 0-394-71063-0; Random House, new revised 3rd ed., 1990. [With Robert B. Stobaugh.]
• Global Insecurity: A Strategy for Energy and Economic Renewal. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. ISBN 0-395-30517-9. Reprint: Viking Penguin Books, 1983, ISBN 0-14-006752-3. [With Martin Hillenbrand.]
• Russia 2010 : And What It Means for the World. New York: Random House, 1993. ISBN 0-679-42995-6. Reprint: Vintage, 1995, ISBN 0-679-75922-0 }. [With Thane Gustafson.]
• The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy. Revised, retitled, and updated ed. New York: Free Press, 2002. ISBN 0-684-83569-X. (Original edition, entitled: The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World: New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998; ISBN 0-684-82975-4.) [With Joseph A. Stanislaw.]
• Global Energy: Challenges and Priorities (Foreign Affairs Editors' Choice). Council on Foreign Relations Press, 2001. ISBN 0-87609-305-5. [With Amory Lovins and Dennis Eklof.]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Daniel Yergin Official Website
• Articles and Appearances by Daniel Yergin
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Daniel Yergin on Charlie Rose
• Daniel Yergin at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Daniel Yergin in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Daniel Yergin at the Notable Names Database

Articles and interviews[link]

• Booknotes interview with Yergin on The Prize, January 27, 1991
• Mr Bush and the Riga axioms, S. Varadarajan, 2005
• Crisis in the Pipeline, Daniel Yergin, The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2006
• A Price Tag to Growth, LiveMint, February 23, 2007
• Visions of an Age When Oil Isn’t King The New York Times, September 20, 2011