Oil’s new world order
By Daniel Yergin,
WashPost
Published: October 28
For more than five decades, the world’s oil map has centered on the Middle East. No matter what new energy resources were discovered and developed elsewhere, virtually all forecasts indicated that U.S. reliance on Mideast oil supplies was destined to grow. This seemingly irreversible reality has shaped not only U.S. energy policy and economic policy, but also geopolitics and the entire global economy.
But today, what appeared irreversible is being reversed. The outline of a new world oil map is emerging, and it is centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere. The new energy axis runs from Alberta, Canada, down through North Dakota and South Texas, past a major new discovery off the coast of French Guyana to huge offshore oil deposits found near Brazil.
This shift carries great significance for the supply and the politics of world oil. And, for all the debates and speeches about energy independence throughout the years, the transformation is happening not as part of some grand design or major policy effort, but almost accidentally. This shift was not planned — it is a product of a series of unrelated initiatives and technological breakthroughs that, together, are taking on a decidedly hemispheric cast.
The search for a “hemispheric energy policy” for the United States has been a subject of discussion ever since the oil crises and supply disruptions of the 1970s. Yet it was never easy to pin down exactly what such a policy would mean. Some years ago, an economic adviser to a presidential candidate dropped in to see me, explaining the directive that his boss had given him: “You know that Western hemispheric energy policy that I have been giving speeches about? Could you talk to some people around the country and find out what I actually mean by a Western hemispheric energy policy?”
(More here.)
WashPost
Published: October 28
For more than five decades, the world’s oil map has centered on the Middle East. No matter what new energy resources were discovered and developed elsewhere, virtually all forecasts indicated that U.S. reliance on Mideast oil supplies was destined to grow. This seemingly irreversible reality has shaped not only U.S. energy policy and economic policy, but also geopolitics and the entire global economy.
But today, what appeared irreversible is being reversed. The outline of a new world oil map is emerging, and it is centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere. The new energy axis runs from Alberta, Canada, down through North Dakota and South Texas, past a major new discovery off the coast of French Guyana to huge offshore oil deposits found near Brazil.
This shift carries great significance for the supply and the politics of world oil. And, for all the debates and speeches about energy independence throughout the years, the transformation is happening not as part of some grand design or major policy effort, but almost accidentally. This shift was not planned — it is a product of a series of unrelated initiatives and technological breakthroughs that, together, are taking on a decidedly hemispheric cast.
The search for a “hemispheric energy policy” for the United States has been a subject of discussion ever since the oil crises and supply disruptions of the 1970s. Yet it was never easy to pin down exactly what such a policy would mean. Some years ago, an economic adviser to a presidential candidate dropped in to see me, explaining the directive that his boss had given him: “You know that Western hemispheric energy policy that I have been giving speeches about? Could you talk to some people around the country and find out what I actually mean by a Western hemispheric energy policy?”
(More here.)
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