Intelligence Briefing: 12.12.11
Piracy Metastasizes Off West Africa
Summary: With the international response more effectively suppressing piracy off Somali, attention is increasingly turning to the growing problem off West Africa. A similar lack of effective African naval strength on the Western Coast is creating the elements for a similar issue in that region. The four million b/d of crude exports from West Africa will increasingly come under threat. The U.N. has dispatched a team to coordinate the regional response, but it seems likely that shipping costs will rise in the region in response to the attacks.
Geopolitics
Founded with the name Energy Security Analysis, Inc, ESAI has been a thoughtful commentator on energy security issues for 25 years. Building on founder Edward N. Krapels’ 1980 book, Oil Crisis Management: Strategic Stockpiling for International Security, ESAI has remained focused on geopolitical factors that shape energy markets and influence energy security decisions. In 1987, ESAI published SPRO-Watch, a Guide to Strategic Stock Drawdowns in the Persian Gulf Crisis of 1987. In early 1991, ESAI published The Crude Oil Market after the Iraq Crisis, which provided a detailed analysis of the longer term implications of the Gulf War. From 1990-1995, ESAI published a quarterly journal entitled Petroleum Politics, which analyzed any kind of political development which affected petroleum. ESAI remained engaged in the energy security debate, publishing Energy Security Revisited: New Approaches for a Global Petroleum Market in 1999. Since then ESAI has conducted proprietary studies on energy security policy for the U.S., Japanese and Indian governments. In 2003, ESAI published After Saddam: Stability in the Persian Gulf, and in 2006, ESAI President Sarah Emerson published When Should We Use Strategic Stocks? in the journal, Energy Policy. More broadly, ESAI’s analytical team covers a wide range of geographic expertise and provides monthly analyses of Russia, the Caspian countries, China and the countries of Latin America. From 2001 to present, ESAI has collaborated with faculty members at the US Naval War College to produce the biweekly Intelligence Briefing, which covers a wide range of geopolitical issues, but with particular focus on the Persian Gulf.