The Weakest Link? Hedging Energy Security Challenges and Opportunities within the Eastern Neighborhood, The Mediterranean and the Black Sea/Caspian Region. (original) (raw)

In the last two decades, energy politics has grown in importance as a state, regional and global issue. With a triangle of broad and overlapping economic, security and sustainability preoccupations, energy policies have been traditionally outward-oriented from energy consuming to energy producing regions. From its inception, hydrocarbon energy politics has been rooted in the security of crude oil supply dating back to the oil crises that broke out in the 1970s. With a distinct supply security rationale at the core, 'energy security' has thereafter been mainly associated with the adequacy of the energy supply at a reasonable price. (Haghighi, 2008, p.461) The logic of energy supply security informed the energy policies of energy-consuming states and shaped a distinct language of 'energy security' centered on the interests of energy consumers. Nevertheless, over the last two decades this language has changed substantially due to an unparalleled shift in the balance of power between energy consumers and producers. As the adequacy and the reasonable price have been increasingly beyond reach with an increasingly 'tight' global market and volatile oil prices, the language of energy security discussions has been 'upgraded' from the 'traditional', and global in scope, oil security to include a new hydrocarbon source -natural gas. Just as the shift from coal