Experts Discuss Changes in Global Energy Market

“I think it’s all geopolitics,” said Amos Hochstein about the effect of low oil prices around the world.

Hochstein, the special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs at the U.S. State Department, was a panelist at “GCC Countries in the New Oil World,” an event hosted by the Center on Global Energy Policy event on January 28. Hochstein and his fellow panelists focused most of their discussion on the political ramifications of recent changes in the global energy market.

The panelists also touched on another possible ramification of “the new oil world”: a more environmentally sustainable global energy market. Adnan Shihab-Eldin, director general of the Kuwait Foundation for Advancement of Sciences, suggested that a strategy for OPEC countries going forward should be to moderate oil prices, but also invest heavily in technology that will make oil “greener.”

Hochstein and Shihab-Eldin were joined by Bassam Fattouh, director of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies; F. Gregory Gause III, professor of international affairs and head of the international affairs department at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service; and Adam Sieminski, administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Jason Bordoff, CGEP director, moderated.