CIAO DATE: 04/2012
March 2012
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Any estimate of energy risk is highly uncertain. The reality can vary sharply according to national and global economic conditions, politics, war, natural disasters, discoveries of new reserves, advances in technology, unanticipated new regulations and environmental issues, and a host of other factors. Moreover, any effort to model all aspects of world energy supply and demand requires a model so complex that many of its interactions have to be nominal efforts to deal with the variables involved. Even if perfect data were available, there could still be no such thing as a perfect model. That said, the US Department of Energy (DOE) and its Energy Information Agency (EIA) do provide estimates based on one of the most sophisticated data collection and energy modeling efforts in the world. Moreover, this modeling effort dates back decades to the founding of the Department of Energy and has been steadily recalibrated and improved over time – comparing its projections against historical outcomes and other modeling efforts, including those of the International energy Agency and OPEC. The DOE modeling effort is also relatively conservative in projecting future demand for petroleum and natural gas. It forecasts relatively high levels of supply from alternative sources of energy, advances in new sources of energy and liquid fuels, and advances in exploration and production. It also forecasts advances in conservation and efficiency, and assumes relatively high growth levels in the use of coal and nuclear power in spite of environment and political issues. This analysis draws on the work of the EIA to illustrate the energy risks in the Middle East and North Africa affecting the production and export of oil and gas. It draws on a wide range of EIA sources, including its International Energy Outlook for 2012, its preliminary Annual Energy Outlook for 2012, and its various country studies. The data used as referenced in each of the “slides” used in this presentation.
Resource link: Energy Risks in North Africa and the Middle East [PDF] - 4.2M