Home › Features › Essays › Energy Security in the 1990s

Energy Security in the 1990s

Daniel Yergin
Fall 1988
Summary -- 

Currently, oil prices are low and supplies plentiful. But the key to understanding energy policy (in which, for the USA, oil is central), is uncertainty. Analyzes the 'margin of security in supplies', recommending that US energy policy should (1) slow the growth of oil imports (2) strengthen the domestic oil and gas industry (3) increase natural gas use (4) promote energy efficiency (5) support energy R&D (6) fortify the strategic reserve to 100 days (7) renew the US commitment to the International Energy Agency (8) ensure competitive markets.

Daniel Yergin is president of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. He is the author of the forthcoming Prize of the Venture: Oil, Money, and Power. He was co-editor of Energy Future: Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School and senior author of Global Insecurity: A Strategy for Energy and Economic Renewal.

We're sorry, but Foreign Affairs does not have the copyright to display this article online.

Related

Essay, Summer 1988
Bipartisan Objectives for American Foreign Policy
Henry A. Kissinger and Cyrus Vance

If the USA is to sustain its role in the world, it needs a bipartisan foreign policy. "There is a strategic opportunity for a significant improvement in Soviet-American relations", while NATO needs redefinition as a guard against utopianism and in the light of economic integration in Europe. Also notes the US budget problem and relations with Japan and China. In the Middle East, supports guaranteed Israeli and Palestine states. Reviews pan-American issues. In general calls for "more selective and collaborative strategies based on new realities". Former US secretaries of state. The footnotes indicate the points on which the authors disagree, viz (1) the future of SDI (2) directions of arms control in the future (3) the value of an international conference on the Middle East.

Read
Essay, Jul/Aug 2008
In the Tank
David G. Victor and Sarah Eskreis-Winkler

Oil stocks can help buffer economic shocks, but only if Washington radically reforms its handling of them.

Read
Essay, Winter 1981
Canada, the United States and the World Economy
Marie-Josee Drouin and Harald B. Malmgren

Relations between Canada and the United States have become more strained than at any time in recent memory. There have been many earlier periods of tension, but the policy orientations of the two capitals in late 1981 appear to be far more divergent than in the past. The two governments seem to be on a collision course, in a context that political leaders cannot fully control.

Read
Cover image

In the Magazine

November/December 2009 / 6, 88
Essay
The Dollar and the Deficits
C. Fred Bergsten

The global economic crisis has revealed the folly of large U.S. budget and trade deficits, as well as of the strong dollar that makes them possible. If it is serious about recovery, the United States must balance the budget, stimulate private saving, and embrace a declining dollar.
Read