Two-thirds of the world’s population lives within range of any given coastline. Yet by 2025, 40 percent of the world’s population will be living in countries experiencing significant water shortages. According to some calculations, the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface in one hour is enough to power the planet for an entire year. So what is the conundrum in the water-energy nexus?  The fact is that most of the earth's water is seawater unfit for human consumption. Most of the world's fresh water requires energy for treatment and distribution, and literally all power generation requires water for processes like cooling and for the extraction of resources on which it depends. In our ongoing commitment to exploring the relationship between energy and water, long-standing JES contributor Allan Hoffman takes a thoughtful look  at our need for both of these goods in a world increasingly strained by resource availability and challenged by the absolute need to provide both to an expanding world population.

A frequent topic in energy security circles is the relationship between international oil companies (IOCs) and national oil companies (NOCs) and what makes them tick.  However, in carrying through such an analysis, one needs to scratch beneath the surface and examine the regulatory, budgetary, commercial and national security environments in which both sets of companies must operate.  Contributors Llewelyn Hughes and Sean J.  Keyling offer a highly nuanced analysis of the policy environments that US oil and fuel companies operate within, using two case studies involving China's 2005 bid for Unocal and the evolution of ethanol as a transportation fuel in the US.  In doing so, they offer a fresh framework for analysis that inclusively addresses how the energy security debate stretches far beyond national security objectives and is impacted by a set of more local or regional policy issues.  

The Black Sea region is hard for many to pinpoint yet one of the most vitally important regions to European energy security.  While states across the region over the past decade have transformed into NATO and EU Member States, Western interests have failed to expand the region’s energy infrastructure by bolstering important projects; the BTC and SCP projects now completed are the only exceptions.  While Western interests have been 'negotiating' the Nabucco concept, China has completed Central Asian export projects from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.   Concurrently, Russia's energy imperialism is growing unimpeded as its expands its interests across the Black Sea region to the dismay of Western interests.  Where the region is headed, why it is important, and what needs to be done is covered by JES Contributor Sohbet Karbuz.

Failure of the United States to adequately engage its Latin American partners, on whom American consumers depend for a full one-fourth of their oil supply, is the Achilles heel not only of American foreign policy, but of its energy policy as well.  Contributor, Dr. Nancy Brune of Sandia National Lab, lays out what are some of the cascading effects of America's 'unfocused engagement' with our neighbors.  These effects include creeping Russian, Iranian and Chinese influence in countries of importance to US national security interests, not the least of which where energy is concerned.