The Latest Threats To Global Energy Security
The vast global network of energy infrastructure is, for all intents and purposes, a living, breathing organism. And like other organisms, it’s full of vulnerabilities. Across all sectors and at every point in the supply chain, physical – and of course cyber – weaknesses pose serious threats to the functionality and reliability of vital energy systems.
Just how vulnerable is the global energy system? It’s a difficult question to answer. Weather-related outages in the US alone are estimated to cost between $18 billion and $33 billion annually. Direct theft of oil and gas is harder to quantify – in Nigeria it’s a $1.5 billion a month business; and in Mexico millions of barrels disappear every year. What we can do is identify some pressure points moving forward. Broadly, they can be divided into three categories: production, transportation, and distribution. In the interest of time, climate preparedness – a worthy category on its own – will be largely left for discussion another day.
Security of supply is the defining principle behind each of these categories, but perhaps more so the first two. How secure is our global supply from a production and transportation standpoint? Generally speaking, quite secure, but the grey area is large enough and sufficiently unpredictable to warrant a closer look.
Let’s begin with some of the more tangible issues facing energy transportation before turning our attention to production. Practically speaking, no method is perfect, and most present more than a handful of issues.
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