Energy and development: Understanding the risks

Abstract

It is no secret that highly industrialized nations such as Great Britain, the United States, and Japan depend heavily on the oil rich nations of the Middle East - and increasingly Latin America - for the petroleum products to fuel their economies. On the other hand, this demand has produced sudden enormous wealth in these regions, a situation which inevitably brings political and social, as well as economic, strains. Understanding the interplay of the volatile energy market with the politics, economics, and growth in these areas are thus of vital importance both for the developing areas and the countries with which they do business. To help monitor, understand, and forecast the changes and risks associated with these critical areas, a group of MIT researchers drawn from several disciplines have combined their expertise in a series of projects under the auspices of the Energy and Development Research Program. And members of the group have developed new and unique methods for producing comprehensive analyses of the economic and political issues in these areas.