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Roubini Topic Archive: Energy Security and Policy
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Will the Dutch Disease Kill Hopes Raised by Colombia’s Free Trade Agreement?
After a torturous journey through Congress, the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (CTPA), first signed in 2006, came into effect on May 15 of this year. The agreement has raised high hopes in Colombia, for which the United States is by far the largest trading partner. However, while the CTPA was fighting its way through [...]
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Fracking and the Environment: An Economic Perspective
When people look at “fracking”—the production of natural gas through hydraulic fracturing techniques–they see different things. Critics see polluted wells, exploding houses, and earthquakes—an environmental disaster in the making. These anti-frackers have a simple solution: ban it. In contrast, industry supporters see hydraulic fracturing as a safe technology that drillers have been using for decades [...]
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Please, Secretary Chu, Retract your Retraction. High Gas Prices are Good. You Were Right the First Time.
Why would a president want to bring an eminent scientist like Energy Secretary Steven Chu into government? In the hope, one would suppose, that he would speak truth to power. Sadly, that hope seems to have been been dashed in the case of Secretary Chu. In 2008, before becoming part of the cabinet, he had [...]
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When Does ‘It Will Hurt the Poor’ Outweigh ‘It’s Good for the Environment?’
“Nearly every environmental policy hurts the poor the most,” say Iain Murray and David Bier of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Writing recently in the Washington Examiner, they don’t limit their criticism to absurdities like federal tax credits for the $100,000 plug-in Fisker Karma (“a bold expression of uncompromised responsible luxury.”) The two analysts have it [...]
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Court’s Latest Stay of Clean Air Regulations Shows the Best Can Be the Enemy of the Good
On December 30, The U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. stayed implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), which was to take effect on January 1, 2012. The EPA maintains that CSAPR would save 13,000 to 34,000 premature deaths annually, as well as lead to improvements in visibility in [...]
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Linking Keystone XL to the Payroll Tax Only Shows Why we Need a Real Energy Policy
The administration is coming under increasing pressure to accelerate approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, designed to carry increased U.S. imports of bitumen from Canadian oil sands. The latest form of pressure is a Senate bill that would fast-track KXL in exchange for a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut and other items. After [...]
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Natural Gas Flaring, Carbon Taxes, and the Risk of Alien Invasion
To an alien orbiting Earth in a flying saucer, natural gas flares would be one of the most visible signs of human life on earth. Notice I said “human life,” not “intelligent life.” Flaring is the practice of burning off the natural gas that is produced in association with oil rather than piping it to [...]
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Why Rolling Back Environmental Protection is the Wrong Fix for Jobs
Just when it seemed nothing could do it, persistently high U.S. unemployment has produced bipartisan agreement in Washington—agreement to roll back environmental protection in an attempt to save jobs and create new ones. The White House, shrugging off environmentalist opposition, has quashed a major EPA initiative that would have strengthened ozone regulations and is reportedly [...]
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The Hidden Pitfalls of Increasing U.S. Dependence on Canadian Oil Sands
Canada is the biggest supplier of oil imports to the United States. Increasingly, those imports come from its vast reserves of oil sands. Is the growing U.S. dependence on Canadian oil sands a win-win deal for both countries, crucial for U.S. energy security, and a source of jobs and economic growth, as American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard claims? Is the development of Canadian oil sands “the most destructive project on earth”, as a Canadian environmental report calls it? What pitfalls for policy makers and investors lie hidden in the heated rhetoric coming from both sides in the oil sands debate?
