Research Library

In this study, Al Troner reviews, analyzes, and tracks the changes that have emerged in US oil and gas over recent years, and surveys the implications of modification, or full abolition, of the decades-long US crude oil export ban.

North America is emerging as a virtual supply center of the international energy market, a development that has implications for the economic and geopolitical stature of the entire continent.

This issue brief explores China’s deepening relationship with Costa Rica, which severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 2007 to strengthen its economic ties with the PRC. China’s relationship with Costa Rica has opened the possibility for the PRC to reach out to other countries in the region.

Under proposed legislation to implement Mexico’s energy reforms, Pemex will remain a privileged state operator supporting exploration and production in most of the country's proven onshore and shallow water fields. It is not known if energy reform will effectively turn Pemex into a firm able to compete without policy bias against private investors.

Energy regulation under Mexico's energy-sector reforms are of great interest to investors, since autonomous regulators—protected from political pressures and able to make and sustain technical decisions—can guarantee greater legal consistency than government authorities exposed to political pressures. The difficulty was finding an alternative model that ensured the institutional strengthening of the agencies without relinquishing too much control of the executive branch.

Fossil fuel subsidies have allowed energy exporting countries to distribute resource revenue, bolstering legitimacy for governments, many of which are not democratically elected. But subsidy benefits are dwarfed by the harmful consequences of encouraging uneconomic use of energy. Now, with consumption posing a threat to long-term exports, governments face a heightened need to raise prices that have come to be viewed as entitlements. While reforms of state benefits are notoriously politically dangerous, previous experience shows that subsidies can be rolled back without undermining government legitimacy — even in autocratic settings — given proper preparation.

The violent struggle between rival Mexican drug cartels and other criminal groups has left tens of thousands dead and towns across Mexico paralyzed with fear. With overwhelmed police forces relatively powerless to control drug-related murders and kidnappings, a growing number of vigilante organizations, or self-defense groups, aim to restore order — but now even they are fighting, and killing, among themselves.

A proposed inflation targeting (IT) approach to monetary policy has generated vigorous debate in India, where inflation has not dropped much below 10 percent for the past eight years.

Information technology policy fellow Chris Bronk writes that cybersecurity threats to the U.S. energy industry and infrastructure are rising and require increased preparedness by the U.S. Army and Department of Defense.

The tainted legacy of uranium mining on the coastal plains of Texas.