The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently published a series of reports assessing how rapid growth in U.S., and possibly global, oil and gas production from shales may impact various net-energy exporting or importing countries.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently published a series of reports assessing how rapid growth in U.S., and possibly global, oil and gas production from shales may impact various net-energy exporting or importing countries.
The reports also consider how the U.S. energy and geopolitical strategies will evolve in light of a changing global energy balance. Perhaps the major unknown that the reports highlight is whether other countries will follow the U.S. in aggressively developing their shale resources. Under most future energy scenarios the CSIS authors considered (ranging from a baseline in which shale gas production is a mostly U.S. phenomenon, to global shale gas production, and tight oil making a minor contribution globally), some elements are consistent:
- Energy demand continues to shift toward Asia.
- Natural gas demand will grow in response to climate and air quality goals, and in the absence of a global climate agreement.
- The European Union will continue to be import dependent even if unconventional oil and gas production expand, and the EU will face challenges in continuing its dual goals for energy security and environmental activism.
The three reports are available for downloading here:
- New Energy, New Geopolitics, Background Report 1, Energy Impacts
- New Energy, New Geopolitics, Background Report 2, Geopolitical and National Security Impacts
- New Energy, New Geopolitics, Background Report 3, Scenarios, Strategies and Pathways