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Amy Myers Jaffe provides an expert look at the promises and challenges of the future of energy, highlighting what the United States needs to do to maintain its global influence in a post-oil era. She explores how the rapid pace of innovation is altering international security dynamics in fundamental ways.

There is evidence that the risk of stranded assets in the oil and gas sector is underpriced in financial markets. Publicly traded Western oil and gas companies are starting to write down assets, opening up the possibility that more rationalisation of value is likely to come. To the extent that large oil companies diversify portfolios to include cleaner energy and carbon sequestration technologies, it could reduce the risk of a sudden cascading change in the stock valuation of these firms and related bond and credit markets. Instead, the vast majority of oil and gas assets that will be stranded are in the control of sovereign states whose national budgets are highly dependent on oil and gas revenues. Thus, the problem of stranded asset risk for the oil and gas sector may be most relevant in markets for sovereign credit as well as risks that go beyond financial losses.

By the 2020s, the capital of energy will likely have shifted back to the Western Hemisphere, where it was prior to the ascendancy of Middle Eastern megasuppliers such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the 1960s. With the help of horizontal drilling and other innovations, shale gas production in the US has skyrocketed from virtually nothing to 15 to 20 percent of the US natural gas supply in the last decade. Meanwhile, onshore oil production in the US is about to stage a comeback. Adapted from the source document.

Opens with an overview of US Caspian policy, which began tepidly in the wake of the Soviet collapse but heated up in ensuing years as the Caspian region attained high salience in the US foreign policy hierarchy of concerns. Issues surrounding the transport of oil & natural gas are addressed before considering just what is at stake strategically for the US in the region. It is seen that the US & Russia are better off cooperating than trying to exclude one another from the region. Three key conclusions around which US policy shifts will revolve are the fact that Central Asia & the Caucasus cannot be adjuncts to any Russia policy, conflict resolution is a key facet of any policy, & energy assets are not sufficient to warrant giving the region vital strategic status. It is concluded that US national interests in the Caspian Basin are more derivative than fundamental; thus US commitment should be taken on a case-by-case basis & be part of a wider focus on stability in the People's Republic of China, Russia, Turkey, & the Persian Gulf. J. Zendejas

The United States has become increasingly entangled in Persian Gulf politics and this involvement will have wide ranging consequences for the geopolitics of oil and its stable flow to world markets. A refocus of US strategy is badly needed: Washington needs to exploit natural alliances among countries that have a stake in a stable Middle East. Internatianalisation of issues is the best way to help the Persian Gulf region avoid increasing militarisation. Asian leaders are becoming increasingly worried about their economies' growing dependence on Persian Gulf oil and gas and are likely to be receptive ta any multinational initiative that would make supplies from the region more secure or provide a framework for developing alternative energy substitutes. In particular, the United States could greatly benefit from drawing China into the equation as an oil-importer ally rather than focusing on how Beijing could some day be strategic rival. (Survival / SWP)