Energy Security - Energy Security Threats

Energy Security Threats

The modern world relies on a vast energy supply to fuel everything from transportation to communication, to security and health delivery systems. Perhaps most alarmingly, peak oil expert Mike Ruppert has claimed that for every calorie of food produced in the industrial world, ten calories of oil and gas energy are invested in the forms of fertilizer, pesticide, packaging, transportation, and running farm equipment. Energy plays an important role in the national security of any given country as a fuel to power the economic engine. Some sectors rely on energy more heavily than others; for example, the Department of Defense relies on petroleum for approximately 77% of its energy needs. Threats to energy security include the political instability of several energy producing countries, the manipulation of energy supplies, the competition over energy sources, attacks on supply infrastructure, as well as accidents, natural disasters, rising terrorism, and dominant countries reliance to the foreign oil supply.

Foreign oil supplies are vulnerable to unnatural disruptions from in-state conflict, exporters’ interests, and non-state actors targeting the supply and transportation of oil resources. The political and economic instability caused by war or other factors such as strike action can also prevent the proper functioning of the energy industry in a supplier country. For example, the nationalization of oil in Venezuela has triggered strikes and protests in which Venezuela’s oil production rates have yet to recover. Exporters may have political or economic incentive to limit their foreign sales or cause disruptions in the supply chain. Since Venezuela’s nationalization of oil, anti-American Hugo Chávez has threatened to cut off supplies to the United States more than once. The 1973 oil embargo against the U.S. is a historical example in which oil supplies were cut off to the US due to US support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. This has been done to apply pressure during economic negotiations—such as during the Russia-Belarus energy dispute. Terrorist attacks targeting oil facilities, pipelines, tankers, refineries, and oil fields are so common they are referred to as “industry risks”. Infrastructure for producing the resource is extremely vulnerable to sabotage. One of the worst risks to oil transportation is the exposure of the five ocean chokepoints, like the Iranian controlled Strait of Hormuz. Anthony H. Cordsman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington warns, “It may take only one asymmetric or conventional attack on a Ghawar Saudi oil field or tankers in the Strait of Hormuz to throw the market into a spiral."

According to an article by the RAND Corporation, oil export revenues are used to finance terrorist groups, like Hamas and Hizballah. Former CIA director, Jim Woosley reports, “Except for our own Civil War, this is the only war that we have fought where we are paying for both sides. We pay Saudi Arabia $160 billion for its oil, and $3 or $4 billion of that goes to the Wahhabis, who teach children to hate. We are paying for these terrorists with our SUVs.”

New threats to energy security have emerged in the form of the increased world competition for energy resources due to the increased pace of industrialization in countries such as India and China. Although still a minority concern, the possibility of price rises resulting from the peaking of world oil production is also starting to attract the attention of at least the French government. Increased competition over energy resources may also lead to the formation of security compacts to enable an equitable distribution of oil and gas between major powers. However, this may happen at the expense of less developed economies. The Group of Five, precursors to the G8, first met in 1975 to coordinate economic and energy policies in the wake of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, a rise in inflation and a global economic slowdown. NATO leaders meeting in Bucharest in April 2008 may discuss the possibility of using the military alliance "as an instrument of energy security." One of the possibilities include placing troops in the Caucasus region to police oil and gas pipelines.