The State of Israel is working to turn itself into a center of knowledge and industry for a competitive transportation fuel market.  While the genus of this objective is obvious, i.e. a country that is oil import dependent in an unfriendly neighborhood and the economic and environmental costs associated with oil’s monopoly over the transportation sector, the vision it projects to overcome these obstacles is a genuinely inclusive one that seeks international engagement and cooperation with partners around the world.     

The future of natural gas in Europe is a conundrum.  While natural gas demand is soaring in the US and across Asia, demand has actually declined in Europe.  Will a turn-away from natural gas dampen the EU's appetite for modernizing its critical energy infrastructure?  Is Europe turning to coal to displace gas in power generation and if so is the European Carbon Market actually contributing to this fuel switch? First time contributor to the Journal of Energy Security, Jozef Badida, examines Europe's gas future within this complex context.   

Germany has slowly but surely pursued a policy of energiewende (energy turn or transformation) since the 1980s, when the plan to move away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources was first conceived. The plan was made policy in 2000 with the Renewable Energy Act, and by 2010 40% of Germany’s power generation came from either renewable (17%) or from nuclear energy (23%) and the plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% in 2020 and 80% by 2050 seemed a realistic goal. In 2011, however, in response to the post-tsunami nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that eight of Germany’s oldest nuclear plants would be shut down immediately and all of the remaining plants would be decommissioned by 2022. Now, Germany finds itself pursuing ambitious clean energy goals without its biggest source of low-carbon emission energy. 

ITER, with its nuclear license granted by the French nuclear authorities, with its headquarters inaugurated and over 80% of its procurements signed off on, is a nuclear fusion project well underway.   In a few weeks from now the first test convoy for the heavy-lifts and exceptional size components which are currently being manufactured around the world will roll from the industrial port of Fos-sur Mer near Marseille, France to the ITER construction site in Cadarache, France some 80 kilometers further north. Here, the footprint of the largest fusion machine ever built is already clearly visible and some 3000 personnel will arrive on site in the course of then next months to erect the infrastructure that is necessary to conduct one of the most ambitious scientific endeavors mankind has ever undertaken.

America is facing an energy-security paradox. Our domestic oil production is on the rise; the cars that roll onto our roads are more efficient than ever, and net oil imports are at their lowest level since the days when President George Herbert Walker Bush lived in the White House. Yet none of this has reined in the price of gasoline. This runs counter to U.S. conventional wisdom over the past forty years, touted by every president since Richard Nixon. Read more of Gal Luft's article on the energy security paradox.

CNBC:

Gal Luft, co-director at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and a senior adviser to the U.S. Energy Security Council said that though a Chavez departure may already be well factored into prices, it won't "translate into market calmness before it is clear what the nature of the new leadership is."

Clarity over who will be running state-oil producer PDVSA will be equally important, Luft said. "The company has been battered by terribly ineffective personnel changes and removal of competent leadership which has been replaced by political appointees," he said. "Once we begin to see changes in the company's leadership, reflecting professionalism and competence, that could mean the company is making a U-turn, becoming attractive for investors."

Meanwhile, a former executive at PDVSA told CNBC that Venezuela has lost its ability to influence global oil markets because years of under investment in the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) member's petroleum industry has constrained production.

"Venezuela is a weak OPEC hawk, as it has no sufficient production to influence prices," said Gustavo Coronel, a founding member of the board of state-oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela. "Venezuela is no longer a factor that can really upset the markets as it was the case 20 years ago."

Gustavo Coronel outlined in the July 2012 JES what it will take for PDVSA to recover. 

Energy frontiers in North America