Research Library

Reducing gas flaring throughout the U.S. would provide substantial economic and environmental benefits, writes energy fellow Gabriel Collins.

The authors examine the recent attacks on oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations to shed light on the current state of U.S.-Gulf strategic relations and the potential directions of its evolution in coming years.

The rising use of low-speed electric vehicles (LSEVs) in China may have a dramatic effect on local gasoline demand and therefore global oil prices, writes energy fellow Gabriel Collins.

GCC states have taken an active role in supporting entrepreneurship creation, as part of efforts to diversify and grow their economies. Yet while state-led entrepreneurship policies have worked to achieve many positive outcomes, they have also revealed some major shortcomings, such as reinforcing the political status quo and limiting the possibility of genuine change toward democratization. M. Evren Tok explores these issues in both a short issue brief and longer research paper on pluralism and inclusion in the Middle East after the Arab Spring. The project is generously supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

As the competition between the U.S. and China intensifies, energy fellow Gabriel Collins calls for U.S. leadership in a technology race that will determine global influence for decades to come.

In June 2018, Saudi Arabia finally put an end to its legal ban on women driving, opening the way for millions of new drivers to navigate across a country three times bigger than Texas. While the long-overdue policy shift provides relief to women who lacked freedom of mobility, the onset of so many new drivers has enormous consequences for transportation and the energy sector, as well as labor market participation and public health.

The list of 13 demands presented in June 2017 by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates suggests a supremely ambitious set of goals behind their embargo of Qatar, including “red lines” that touch directly upon Qatari sovereignty and that Doha will almost certainly reject. The stage is thus set for a contest of endurance, one that with every passing month looks more likely to result in favor of Qatar, writes fellow Gabriel Collins in this brief.

To either close deals or resolve disputes, parties and courts must be able to attach a credible economic value to water that may still be underground in the aquifer. In this brief, fellow Gabriel Collins proposes a means of estimating this value that opens the door for a direct comparison of the implied price paid for groundwater in a land purchase transaction and the price paid for an explicit agreement to acquire only the groundwater estate beneath a tract.

This issue brief examines how produced water recycling in Texas oilfields threatens landowners’ ability to earn revenue from selling frac water and disposal services, a more lucrative revenue stream compared to raising cattle.

As China’s demand for light oil products continues to drive incremental consumption growth, it is becoming apparent that commodities framed as “oil products” are increasingly not actually made from crude oil. Fellow Gabriel Collins explores the possible ramifications of this situation in this issue brief. He writes that oil producers — whether in Riyadh, Moscow or the Permian Basin — should take stock of how China’s growing use of “oil products” that do not actually come from crude oil may translate into effective reductions in demand and prices for the crude oil they produce.