Energy and security.pdf

6. Energy and security: regional and global

dimensions

KAMILA PRONISKA

I. Introduction

The recent surge of debate about energy security and its place in international

strategy and politics has often been compared to the impact of the first oil

crisis in the 1970s. In reality, it has a different and more varied set of origins.

Since the 1970s there have been changes in the structure of the energy market,

the nature of energy security and the challenges to it, and the geopolitical

environment. These changes all affect the understanding of what energy secur-

ity is and what are the best national, regional and global methods of ensuring

it. At the same time, states differ in their starting positions regarding energy

security, and their energy strategies and policies are chosen under the influ-

ence of broader economic, geopolitical and ideological calculations than was

the case in the 1970s. This leads some of them to take a nationalistic approach

to energy security, often including a readiness to use force (military or eco-

nomic) to protect their energy interests. Other countries show more under-

standing of the need for collective, institutional measures to ensure energy

security.

All these factors shape contemporary international relations in ways that go

beyond the direct strategic and geopolitical dimensions of energy security as

such. On the one hand, they may lead to new strategic alliances and cooper-

ation between states that are major energy market players; on the other hand,

they provide sources of international tension and conflict. Such conflicts in

turn may include ‘resource conflicts’, where the ownership and supply of

energy is itself the key factor, or they may be conflicts in which resources

provide one of many catalysts without taking the central role. Only during the

two world wars of the 20th century did these diverse links between energy and

the traditional or military security agenda become as obvious and visible as

they are today. They are now illustrated not only by the military presence of

major energy consumers in the regions abundant in oil and gas, but also by

terrorist attacks on the energy sector and by the growing concern with pro-

viding military protection for energy infrastructure around the world.

This chapter concentrates primarily on one small aspect of the energy secur-

ity conundrum—the link between energy and the traditional security agenda. It

focuses for the most part on concerns related to the production, use and supply

of oil and gas, and on the external dimensions of energy policy. Energy secur-

ity clearly cannot be reduced to oil and gas: the use of other energy sources

SIPRI Yearbook 2007: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security

216 S E CU RI T Y A N D CO N F L I C T S , 2006

such as coal, nuclear energy or renewable sources 1 is equally relevant to

enhancing a country’s energy security, and may also trigger energy security

concerns. Nevertheless, the significance of oil and gas to the world economy

and the fact that they are traded over long distances from a few major prod-

uction centres to consumers scattered literally worldwide make them the main

source of security-relevant competition, tensions, policy dilemmas and even

conflicts.

Section II of this chapter clarifies the meaning of energy security and the

main components and processes that have affected analytical and political

visions of the link between energy and security at different times. Section III

looks in more detail at the evolving structure of, and trends within, the world

market for oil and gas. Section IV considers the links between energy and

international conflict, and section V reviews policy responses to energy secur-

ity challenges that have been considered by states, groups of states and inter-

national organizations up to the present. The conclusions are presented in

section VI.

II. A geostrategic approach to the security of energy supply

Energy security—the availability of energy in sufficient quantities and at

affordable prices at all times—is a complex issue. It brings together a variety

of economic, geopolitical, geological, ecological and institutional factors, but

also breaks down into multiple (global, regional, national and individual con-

sumer) levels of reference and analysis. Analysts’ attempts to define energy

security, and governments’ anxiety to ensure it, are both made more difficult

as a result. In addition, one’s perspective on energy security depends on one’s

position in the energy supply chain. For exporters the most important part of

the concept is security of demand for their energy resources or, in other words,

security of revenues from the energy market. Earning petrodollars is very

often a prerequisite for producers’ economic security—and hence also for

their own energy security. Most consumers, in contrast, focus their security

concerns on the challenge of import dependency and the risk of supply dis-

ruption. In major energy-consuming countries, accordingly, the key security

issues debated include diversity of supply, access to energy resources (often

entailing competition with other major energy consumers), stable oil prices,

security margins for emergencies and the introduction of alternative energy

sources. Other elements of the energy supply chain also interpret energy

security differently: for commercial companies a main component of security

is a stable legal investment regime in producer countries.

Furthermore, the perception of energy security is in constant flux depending

on the structure of the energy market, the state of consumer–producer rela-

1 Renewable sources of energy are those that can regenerate over time or cannot be physically

depleted. Most renewable energy is ultimately obtained from the sun, either directly or indirectly in the

form of wind power, hydropower or photosynthetic energy stored in biomass, known as a bioenergy or

biofuel. Non-solar renewable energy is geothermal power generated from the earth’s heat.

ENERGY AND SECURITY 217

tions, demand and supply trends, technological changes, and—not least—the

fact or fear of energy crises, supply disruptions or price shocks. In practice,

changes in perception can significantly affect both theoretical and practical

approaches to energy security. Thus, energy analysts have not always per-

ceived the significance of the geostrategic component in the same way. 2 For

example, during the 1970s the concept of energy security focused on

geostrategic aspects—reducing import dependency and the vulnerability of

imported supplies to disruption—and was narrowly viewed through the prism

of high dependency on Middle East oil suppliers and the threat of supply dis-

ruptions. In contrast, in the 1990s, when suppliers did not use energy as a

weapon and oil supplies were plentiful at moderate prices, consuming coun-

tries became more confident about oil and gas abundance and more aware of

their own strength as consumers. Since the 1980s importers have felt able, for

instance, to impose sanctions on some oil-exporting countries and to build

multilateral response mechanisms for energy crisis situations. Analysts have

turned accordingly to other aspects of energy security. Prime issues have

included, first, ensuring greater economic efficiency through liberalization and

deregulation in the gas and electricity sectors, and second, enhancing the pro-

tection of the environment against threats generated by the production and use

of energy, such as carbon dioxide emissions.

At state policy level, changes in the content of the energy security agenda

have also been reflected in changes in its relative priority among national and

international concerns. The decisions taken by the Organization of the Petrol-

eum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1973—to impose an oil embargo on

those consumer countries that favoured Israel and to raise oil prices drastic-

ally—provide perhaps the most spectacular example of an incident that lifted

energy security to the top of political agendas. 3 These steps had a truly shock-

ing impact on Western countries that were highly dependent on hitherto rela-

tively cheap and easily obtainable imported oil. On the one hand, they showed

the vulnerability of the importers’ economies to disruption of physical oil sup-

plies and to rapid price increases; on the other hand, the political character of

the Arab countries’ decisions crystallized the notion of energy as a weapon,

with its potentially asymmetrical impact on highly developed economies. One

result was to force major importers to consider multilateral measures to safe-

guard the future security of supply. For the first time in modern history energy

security became an important issue of international debate, with results that

included the creation of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and of multi-

lateral response mechanisms to deal with potentially serious energy supply

2 For further discussion on this see Skinner, R. and Arnott, R., The Oil Supply and Demand Context

for Security of Oil Supply to the EU from the GCC Countries , Working Paper/Monograph no. 29

(Oxford Institute for Energy Studies: Oxford, 2 Apr. 2005), URL <http://www.oxfordenergy.org/books.

php>, pp. 22–31; and Skinner, R., ‘Energy security and producer–consumer dialogue: avoiding a Magi-

not mentality’, Background Paper for Government of Canada Energy Symposium, Ottawa, 28 Oct. 2005,

URL <http://www.oxfordenergy.org/presentations.php?1#>.

3 OPEC was established in 1960. Its members are Algeria, Angola (since Dec. 2006), Indonesia, Iran,

Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

218 S E CU RI T Y A N D CO N F L I C T S , 2006

disruptions. 4 In the long-term perspective, the events of the 1970s gave a cer-

tain advantage to consumer countries by enriching their knowledge of how to

protect themselves against similar future threats, and by prompting them to

develop a wide range of methods and strategies to strengthen energy security

at both the national and multilateral levels.

Nonetheless, the origins of strategic thinking about the security of energy

supplies go back at least to World War I. One pivotal point for the emergence

of energy security as an issue of national strategy was the decision of Winston

Churchill, as cabinet minister responsible for the British Navy in the run-up to

World War I, to switch from using indigenous coal to imported oil as fuel. 5

During World War II the significance of the energy factor was even more

apparent. As the war effort was totally dependent on liquid fuels, both sides

had two major strategic objectives—to defend their own sources and routes of

oil supply, and to attack those of the enemy. 6

Both these older and the more recent historical examples highlight the

centrality of the issue of import dependency, which arises at two levels: the

dependency of individual economies on energy, particularly on oil, and the

dependency of highly developed countries on foreign producers. The second

type of dependency results both from developed countries’ larger appetites for

energy and from the fact that energy resources (above all, oil and gas) are

unevenly distributed across the world. In both contexts, the security of supply

becomes one of the most important terms to be used in identifying and solving

energy security challenges.

Richard Ullman, in an article which became a classic study on redefinition

of security, distinguishes two types of constraints on energy resource sup-

plies. 7 The first is when a non-renewable resource is becoming scarce through

normal depletion; the second is when supplies are constrained through arti-

ficial government efforts to restrict supplies by means of boycotts, embargoes

or cartel agreements. Paul Horsnell makes further distinctions between energy

supply constraints. 8 He distinguishes between swings in oil prices that arise

from ‘policy discontinuity’—that is, changes in the producers’ policy—and

those caused by ‘fundamental discontinuity’, when the available supply within

4 The IEA was established in 1974. Its members are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech

Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea,

Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey,

the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Commission also participates in the IEA’s

work. The IEA’s emergency response mechanisms were set up under the Agreement on an International

Energy Program, signed on 18 Nov. 1974. The text of the agreement is available at URL <http://www.

iea.org/Textbase/about/>.

5 Yergin, D., ‘Ensuring energy security’, Foreign Affairs , vol. 85, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 2006), p. 69.

6 For more on this subject see Jensen, W. G., ‘The importance of energy in the First and Second

World Wars’, Historical Journal , vol. 11, no. 3 (1968), pp. 538–54; Spaight, J. M., ‘The war of oil’,

Military Affairs , vol. 13, no. 3 (autumn 1949), pp. 138–41; and Kinnear, J., ‘Oil and the military: the

challenge of leadership’, Vital Speeches of the Day , vol. 59. no. 14 (1993), pp. 429–33.

7 Ullman, R. H., ‘Redefining security’, International Security , vol. 8, no. 1 (summer 1983), p. 144.

8 Horsnell, P., ‘The probability of oil market disruption: with an emphasis on the Middle East’, Pre-

pared for the study Japanese Energy Security and Changing Global Energy Markets, Rice University,

James Baker Institute for Public Policy, May 2000, URL <http://www.rice.edu/energy/publications/

japaneseenergysecurity.html>.

ENERGY AND SECURITY 219

the system is unable to meet the aggregate demand. He further identifies three

types of sudden disruption of supply: ‘ force majeure disruption’ is the inabil-

ity of a producer to export resources owing to internal or external conditions,

such as war; ‘export restriction disruption’ arises when a producer or group of

producers decides to restrict export for political or strategic reasons; and

‘embargo disruption’ occurs when a consuming country blocks imports from

certain exporters. 9

Regardless of the source of disruption, if the shock to supply cannot be

immediately accommodated by the market, the energy (and economic) secur-

ity of states can be at risk. Different countries, however, will be differently

damaged as a function of the flexibility of their particular energy system. This

makes it a matter of primary importance for policymakers to increase their

own country’s potential for flexible response and thereby decrease their

vulnerability to disruptions. In general, as vulnerability decreases, energy

security increases; 10 and only a country that can safeguard the supply of

energy to its economy and citizens in a time of crisis can feel real energy

security.

Today’s anxieties about this issue are driven by a more complicated set of

factors than in the 1970s. Key elements of these concerns have included: ( a ) a

drastic increase in global energy demand; ( b ) the tight oil market and high oil

prices; ( c ) an increase in the average level of national and regional import

dependencies; ( d ) technical problems with electric power supply resulting in

several temporary power blackouts; ( e ) weaknesses in the energy infra-

structure along the whole supply chain; and ( f ) the liberalization and deregu-

lation of internal energy markets. Non-economic factors leading to more or

less significant disruptions in the oil market have included the impact of hurri-

canes in the Gulf of Mexico, terrorist attacks on strategic energy infrastructure

in the Middle East, the ups and downs of the Iraq conflict following the US-

led invasion of March 2003, and other conflicts and instabilities in some oil-

producing countries and regions.

The concern about terrorist attacks deserves special mention as an addition

to the traditional links between energy and traditional security. The terrorist

attacks on the United States of 11 September 2001 underlined first and fore-

most that the developed world offers many appealing targets to terrorists, and

the energy infrastructure may well be among them. In the aftermath of the

attacks most countries moved their energy installations to a higher state of

alert. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the world has seen an increasing number

of direct terrorist attacks on the energy sector in the world’s major zone of

production—the Middle East. Energy may now become not only an instru-

ment of war (as in the oil embargo of 1973), but also its direct target, and the

vulnerability of the whole energy sector can be described as the Achilles heel

of the developed world. Terrorist attacks (including cyber-attacks) could be

aimed not just at infrastructural elements in the oil and gas supply chain, such

9 Horsnell (note 8), p. 6.

10 Ullman (note 7), p. 146.

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