FSI researchers examine the role of energy sources from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) investigates how the production and consumption of energy affect human welfare and environmental quality. Professors assess natural gas and coal markets, as well as the smart energy grid and how to create effective climate policy in an imperfect world. This includes how state-owned enterprises – like oil companies – affect energy markets around the world. Regulatory barriers are examined for understanding obstacles to lowering carbon in energy services. Realistic cap and trade policies in California are studied, as is the creation of a giant coal market in China.
Inaugural workshop of the joint IIM/A-Stanford study on electricity sector reforms in India.
Indian Institute of Management/Ahmedabad, INDIA
A meeting convened jointly by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and PESD
Stanford University
School of International Relations and Pacific Studies
UC San Diego
San Diego, CA
Encina Hall E419-B
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Mark H. Hayes was recently a Research Fellow with the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD). He lead PESD's research on global natural gas markets, including studies of the growing trade in liquefied natural gas (LNG) and the future for gas demand growth in China.
Dr. Hayes has developed models to analyze the impact of growing LNG imports on U.S. and European gas markets with special attention to seasonality and the opportunity for arbitrage using LNG ships and regasification capacity. From 2002 to 2005, Dr. Hayes managed the Geopolitics of Natural Gas Project, a study of critical political and financial factors affecting investment in cross-border gas trade projects. The study culminated in an edited book volume published by Cambridge University Press.
Prior to coming to Stanford, Mark worked as a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York City. He was a member of the Global Power and Utilities Group, where he was involved in mergers and acquisitions, financing and corporate restructuring.
In 2006 he completed his Ph.D. in the Interdisciplinary Program on Environment and Resources at Stanford University. After completing his Ph.D. at Stanford, Mark has taken a position at RREEF Infrastructure Investments, San Francisco, CA. Mark also has a B.A. in Geology from Colgate University and an M.A. in International Policy Studies from Stanford. From 1999 to 2002 he served on the Board of Trustees of Colgate University.
This conference was convened by the Energy Research Centre (ERC) at the University of Cape Town and the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) at Stanford University. Held at the University of Cape Town, it took stock of what is known about the impact of modern energy services on the poor. The workshop focused mainly on the South African experience, but within the context of several other studies taking shape in countries such as China and India. It brought together invited experts from academia, government and industry to share research findings and potential future research direction was mapped.
University of Cape Town, South Africa
Dr. Nadejda Victor
Sr. Associate
Technology & Management Services, Inc.
U.S. Department of Energy
National Energy Technology Laboratory
PO Box 10940, MS 922-178C
Pittsburgh, PA 15236-0940
Nadejda Makarova Victor is a Research Fellow at the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University. Her current research efforts focus on the political and economic implications of the shift to natural gas, the role of Russia in world oil and gas markets, and analysis of the different technologies of H2 production, storage and transportation. In addition, Dr. Victor is involved with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) study on Energy and Sustainable Development evaluation. She is also consulting at IIASA, where she focuses on economic development indicators and the long-lasting debate over SRES emissions scenarios.
Previously, Dr. Victor was a Research Associate in the Economics Department at Yale University under Prof. William Nordhaus, where she developed a new spatially referenced economic database. At the same time she was involved in research at the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University. There she analyzed the technical changes bearing on the environment, rates and patterns of technical change in the information and computer industries, and R&D in the energy sector.
Before she moved to the U.S. in 1998, Dr. Victor was a Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. Her IIASA research included analysis of the long-term development of economic & energy systems, energy modeling at regional and global scales, scenarios of infrastructure financing, trade in energy carriers and environmental impacts. She had extensive collaboration with international organizations, including the World Energy Council (WEC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She holds a Ph.D. and a B.A. in Economics from Moscow State University.
STANFORD -- With oil prices heading toward $50 a barrel, what would happen if the markets really blew?
Ever since the late 1970s, Washington's answer to such an event has relied on oil stockpiled mainly by the federal government, to be released if market instability warranted it. Today, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains 666 million barrels -- nearly 65 days of imports -- worth nearly $30 billion at current prices. Our industrialized allies have similar stocks, India has started one and China, whose oil imports are rising rapidly, is expected to create a reserve soon. Through the International Energy Agency in Paris, the major oil importers have agreed, in principle, to coordinate their stockpiles.
Unfortunately, reserves in the United States and most democracies are nearly feckless as a policy instrument. The legislation that created the U.S. reserve gave the power to buy and sell stocks to a federal agency, now the Department of Energy, that, in effect, passes the decision on to the president. White House control automatically converts every key decision into a highly political act.
In July 2000, President Clinton's order to transfer some strategic reserves to fill a newly created Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve had obvious political implications for Al Gore's presidential bid. In 1996, Congress required the sale of more than $220 million of stockpiled oil to help pay down the budget deficit, another political move, though one that, in hindsight, looked wise when oil prices tanked two years later.
The uncertainty of reliable production in Russia and Iraq, coupled with the general threat of new terrorist attacks, makes for many worrisome scenarios. But a cloud of political suspicion would hang over any management decision. If President Bush released stockpiled oil to stabilize prices in an election year, no matter how justified his action, he surely would be accused of political pandering. And if he rightly refused to release oil because speculative trading doesn't meet the standard of "severe energy supply interruption," as called for in the 1975 legislation setting up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, would he face charges that he was rewarding his oil buddies with record profits?
One way to take the politics out of governing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would be to mechanize decision-making, such as by setting a price trigger for sales and fills. President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, among others, considered this option and wisely demurred. In the 1980s, the international spot market for oil was not fully developed; prices were mainly driven by opaque long-term contracts, not market dynamics. Price triggers act similarly to price controls, increasing the risk of creating true scarcities in oil supply. Such automatic triggers would have smoothed small gyrations in the oil market but failed when most needed to dampen large price swings.
There's a better way: independent management of the strategic reserve. In contrast to an automatic mechanism, an independent authority would be able to detect subtle economic and political shifts that determine our true vulnerability to oil shocks. More important, such an authority would depoliticize Strategic Petroleum Reserve decision-making, which would enable us to use the stockpile for its originally intended purpose of providing a credible bulwark against the most severe chaos in oil markets.
The president could create an independent board to manage the reserve within existing legislation, but that would not completely remove a political taint. New legislation would better accomplish the job. Congress and the president should look to the Federal Reserve as a model. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve needs its own resources, with politicians supplying broad guidelines for action and periodic review rather than direct control. Such a change would not only affect the United States but would also require remaking the International Energy Agency into something closer to a central bankers' forum.
New management for America's oil reserve would spark new thinking about the optimal size and operation of strategic stocks. Until now, most public debate has focused on the reserve's size. The International Energy Agency suggests that its member countries keep a petroleum stockpile roughly equivalent to 90 days of domestic consumption. In truth, the optimal size of strategic reserves is not a single quantity but depends on political and economic conditions. A competent independent authority would make it possible to carry a smaller stockpile -- at lower cost. Because today's oil prices are formed in highly liquid markets, the standard of "severe supply interruption" is largely meaningless. The better standard is our willingness to absorb price shocks. For that there is no simple answer, yet independent economic authorities can make the wisest choices.
More than 30 years after our first oil shock, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve still wears polyester and bell-bottoms. A dose of market reform and political independence can bring its fashion up to date and create a truly useful tool for protecting the U.S. economy.
