Presentation of the book Energy and the Atlantic: The Shifting Energy Landscape of the Atlantic Basin, written by Paul Isbell and edited by the German Marshall Fund of the U.S.

Energy and the Atlantic: The Shifting Energy Landscape of the Atlantic Basin
Despite the current emphasis of the world’s headlines on Asia, an incipient “Atlantic Basin energy system” has begun to take shape. The Atlantic Basin now hosts one-third of global petroleum production and 40% of reserves; more than one-third of global gas and LNG production, and nearly 60% of the presumed world total of technically recoverable shale gas; and over 70% of global installed renewable energy capacity. Furthermore, a wide range of renewable energies are now rolling out in the Atlantic Basin faster than in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific, making the Atlantic the global leader in low carbon technology. As both conventional and renewable energy supplies expand within the Atlantic world, the traditional dependencies of Western countries on Middle Eastern oil will weaken further. The new “Great Game” in Central Asia will become much less significant in Western strategic calculations. Asia and the Middle East will not disappear from Western radars, but their relative weightings within Western strategic equations will be noticeably reduced.

With the participation of Gonzalo Escribano, Senior Analyst for Energy at the Elcano Royal Institute; Arturo Gonzalo Aizpiri, Director of Institutional Relations and Corporate Responsibility at Repsol; Ramón de Miguel, Adviser for International Affairs to the Chairman of Iberdrola; and Paul Isbell, author of the book (Calouste Gulbenkian Fellow, Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins University-SAIS).

Energy and the Atlantic: The Shifting Energy Landscape of the Atlantic Basin, by Paul Isbell (online PDF version)