Daniel Yergin
Daniel Yergin
Daniel Howard Yerginis a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, speaker, and economic researcher. Yergin is the co-founder and chairman of the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy research consultancy that is now part of IHS Inc. He is best known as author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power and The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. He received his PhD from Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth6 February 1947
CountryUnited States of America
In a world of increasing interdependence, energy security will depend much on how countries manage their relations with one another. That is why energy security will be one of the main challenges of foreign policy in the years ahead. Oil and gas have always been political commodities.
To meet the energy challenge requires the most important energy of all - human creativity. That's the real prize.
So the major obstacle to the development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics, investment and technology.
Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of oil.
When you adjust it for inflation, a year ago we were looking at gasoline prices that were cheaper than they had been during the Great Depression. So it was an extraordinary bargain.
The other are the strategic, so-called strategic stocks that the United States and the other Western industrial countries have, which could put in as much as four million barrels a day of oil into the market pretty quickly.
We experienced similar fears in the 1880s, at the end of World War I and II. And we ran out in the 1970s.
We are living in a different world now. You can see it everywhere in international relations: It was noteworthy that, after his visit to Washington, the Chinese president's next stop was Saudi Arabia.
But look at Angola: The Chinese spent a lot of money to get in there, but they are among many other companies. It is a much bigger game.
There are ample supplies beneath the surface of the planet to have significant growth in oil supply for quite a number of years. The technology is there, the resources are there. But the real question is what happens above ground.
The president is stepping on the gas on these policies. He's increasing the focus, and that means increasing everything from research and development spending to regulatory reform.
Fourteen months ago, oil seemed to be in a bull market ? then Asia collapsed, ... This is basically a gross domestic product crisis driven by Asia, so the real prospects are whether you think Asia by the year 2000 will start showing signs of recovery.
If a war started, the oil price probably would go up, as you said, maybe $5, $6 a barrel until you saw other oil from the extra supplies that are available elsewhere coming into the world, into the market.
If they don't ease more oil into the market over the next six weeks, we could see prices spike a good deal higher than they are now.