Energy Policy
Climate at The Hague: What Happened, Why, and What Now?
Published: 1st December 2000| By: Benito Müller
On Saturday 25 November Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, President of the UN climate change conference at The Hague, suspended proceedings after a days extension until May of next year. What did happen in these final days of this conference for which expectations were so high? According to the following-day editions of America’s most influential [...]
Categories / Energy and the Environment, Energy Comments, Energy Policy
Some Thoughts on Oil and the Mexican Elections of 2000
Published: 1st November 2000| By: Juan Carlos Boué
For quite some time now, the topic of the possible evolution of the Mexican oil industry has been approached in international oil circles solely in terms of one question: what will it take for Mexico to open its upstream sector to the participation of private foreign capital? Of late, and particularly after Mexico’s entry into [...]
Categories / Country and Regional Studies, Energy Comments, Energy Policy, Oil
The Strategic Petroleum Blunder?
Published: 1st October 2000| By: Paul Horsnell
On 22nd September, President Clinton announced that 30 million barrels of oil would be released from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve on a swap basis. Rather than selling the oil, as it had in 1990, the Department of Energy (DOE) would receive offers based on the volume of replacement oil to be put into the [...]
Categories / Energy Comments, Energy Policy, Oil
Global Supply Constraints
Published: 1st September 2000| By: Benito Müller
The soft landing of oil prices at a sustainable level is turning out to be a very elusive objective. Many believe that it is not feasible one; that this market, because of its nature, systematically over -adjusts, produces intense cyclical fluctuations and highly volatile price patterns. Others are convinced that the existence of a cartel [...]
Categories / Energy Comments, Energy Economics, Energy Policy
Managing Hydrocarbon Resources in a New Era: The Call from Algeria
Published: 1st July 2000| By: Robert Mabro
The 1990s will be remembered for the extensive restructuring oil and gas companies went through to adapt to the fundamental changes affecting their markets, their resource areas and their global business environment. However, while mega-mergers, acquisitions and other novel alliances made the headlines, little has been said about the trend towards privatisation of state oil [...]
Categories / Energy Comments, Energy Policy, Gas, Oil
Oil Pricing Systems
Published: 1st May 2000| By: Paul Horsnell
The broad details of how oil is priced in the world market have remained the same for more than thirteen years. Indeed, the current system has now survived for as long as direct setting of an administered price by OPEC did. The system itself may have been stable, but the past thirteen years have seen [...]
Categories / Energy Comments, Energy Economics, Energy Policy, Oil
Gas Power Stations in Norway: Environmental Policy or Political Power Game?
Published: 1st April 2000| By: U. Bartsch
In many respects, Norway is not like other countries. It is large, sparsely populated, very rich, mountainous like Switzerland, oil-exporting like Kuwait, and has a citizenry which, in many instances, wants to see rather more than less state involvement in its affairs. And for the last two years the country had a government, under Kjell [...]
Categories / Energy Comments, Energy Policy, Gas
OPEC: Hard Choices
Published: 1st March 2000| By: Robert Mabro
This article appeared in Middle East Economic Survey Vol XLIII, No 11, 13 March 2000. The oil-exporting countries spent fifteen months (January 1998-March 1999) to agree upon and implement production cuts of the magnitude required by a sceptical and intemperate market for correcting the declining trend in prices. They all knew that a small percentage [...]
Categories / Energy Comments, Energy Economics, Energy Policy, Oil
The Kyoto Protocol: Does US Ratification Really Matter?
Published: 1st February 2000| By: Benito Müller
A growing number of mainly US analysts and academics have voiced their opinion that the UN Protocol concerning the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions adopted in Kyoto on 11 December 1997 is doomed to failure because of US Congress hostility. Indeed, it does not seem very likely that Congress will ratify the Kyoto Protocol at [...]
Categories / Energy Comments, Energy Policy
Suspending Sanctions on Iraq: Make Haste, Slowly
Published: 1st November 1999| By: Robert Mabro
Iraq’s decision on 22 November to suspend oil exports, helping to send oil prices to highs not seen since the Gulf war, underscores the continuing turmoil surrounding international policy on Iraq. By all accounts the UN economic sanctions imposed on the country nine years ago after the invasion of Kuwait have reduced it to hardship. [...]
Categories / Country and Regional Studies, Energy Comments, Energy Policy, Energy Security