Amy Myers Jaffe
Executive Director of Energy and Sustainability
Amy Myers Jaffe is a leading expert on global energy policy, geopolitical risk, and energy and sustainability. Jaffe serves as executive director for energy and sustainability at University of California, Davis with a joint appointment to the Graduate School of Management and Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS). At ITS-Davis, Jaffe heads the fossil fuel component of Next STEPS (Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways).
Before joining UC Davis, Jaffe served as director of the Energy Forum and Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Jaffe’s research focuses on oil and natural gas geopolitics, strategic energy policy, corporate investment strategies in the energy sector, and energy economics. She was formerly senior editor and Middle East analyst for Petroleum Intelligence Weekly.
Jaffe is widely published, including as co-author of “Oil, Dollars, Debt and Crises: The Global Curse of Black Gold” (Cambridge University Press, January 2010 with Mahmoud El-Gamal). She served as co-editor of “Energy in the Caspian Region: Present and Future” (Palgrave, 2002) and “Natural Gas and Geopolitics: From 1970 to 2040” (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
She served as a member of the reconstruction and economy working group of the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group, as project director for the Baker Institute/Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Strategic Energy Policy, as chair, working group on nuclear power in the Middle East for the U.S. Institute for Peace-Stinson Center strategic task force on Iran, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Jaffe, an energy consultant, is a frequent keynote speaker at major energy industry and investment conferences and at board meetings of industry and environmental NGOs. She has provided testimony on Capital Hill on energy matters as well as to governments in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She is a widely quoted commentator on oil and energy policy in the international media, appearing regularly on a variety of television and print media, including CNN, The New Hour with Jim Lehrer, FOX, Al-Jazeera TV, MSNBC, National Public Radio, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times of London. Her writings have been featured by the New York Times, The Economist, Dow Jones International, and Petroleum Intelligence Weekly.
Jaffe was the honoree for Esquire’s annual 100 Best and Brightest
in the contribution to society category (2005) and Elle
Magazine’s Women for the Environment (2006) and holds the
excellence in writing prize from the International Association
for Energy Economics (1994).
California’s Fracking Bonanza May Fall Short of Promise
Shale boom? Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability, says California’s dream of billions in windfall oil revenue from the Monterey shale deposit running through the state may fall short as industry efforts are only receiving mixed results. Jaffe says the shale is more expensive to explore than other shale because of its many layers and complexity.
Will Obama’s Second Term Have a Greener Tint?
In President Obama’s second term, his administration is looking for a greater push toward improving energy technology and responding to climate change. Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at UC Davis, says funding is “better spent in the area of research & development and fundamental science and not so profitable in supporting existing businesses.”
Global Energy Industry Insights and Solutions: Dean Steven Currall Interviews Amy Jaffe, Executive Director of Energy and Sustainability
As energy policy takes center stage internationally in economics, national security and the geopolitical landscape, Dean Steven Currall poses these key questions to Amy Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability for the Graduate School of Management and the Institute of Transportation Studies:
After Keystone Review, Environmentalists Vow To Continue Fight
Environmentalists are hoping that by blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, they can prevent Canada from developing more of its dirty tar sands oil. Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at UC Davis, says the only way to keep the oil under the ground is to change the way we live. “Really, truly, it’s a lifestyle issue. We use 18 to 19 million barrels a day of oil in this country,” she said.
Four Nominees for Energy Secretary to Consider
Dr. Steven Chu is stepping down as energy secretary at the end of February. Chu’s departure can’t come soon enough to suit the Houston Chronicle. So who should be next? The Chronicle suggests Amy Meyers Jaffe in a list of four nominee’s who they believe would best serve our country.
Deep-Sea Drilling Muddies Political Waters
The oceans deep are a repository of many secrets. Shipwrecks have existed undisturbed for centuries, as have corals and fish of almost unimaginable diversity.
Now, increasingly, the secrets of the seabed are being looked at by companies drilling for oil and minerals. International geopolitics and the environment are getting more muddled as a result.
Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director for energy and sustainability at the University of California, Davis, said that the industry’s advances into deeper water had been steady but incremental.
Economist Debates – Fracking
Do the benefits derived from shale gas outweigh the drawbacks of fracking?
Proposer Amy Myers Jaffe defending the motion: “Energy is a fundamental service needed for daily living. Lack of access to fuel is a key driver of poverty and premature mortality. But as essential as energy is to human development, the reality is that all forms of energy production have environmental consequences. There is no single-source supply that can provide the benefits we need at the scale at which we need it without disturbing the natural world.
Ideas @Davos: Global Energy Expert Amy Myers Jaffe Addresses World Economic Forum Leaders
How Unconventional Oil and Gas Are Changing the World’s Energy Map
Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director for energy and sustainability at UC Davis, recently led a discussion at a special World Economic Forum–hosted energy industry dinner attended by oil ministers and national oil company CEOs from European, Latin American, African and Russian firms, as well as U.S. and Canadian senior executives.
High costs raise new questions about Arctic drilling
When Shell started buying leases to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in 2005, the company was betting on Americans’ thirst for any oil locked under those Arctic waters, which could replace declining crude production from Alaska’s North Slope and other onshore resources.
Flash forward eight years, and the scenario has changed dramatically. Global energy expert Amy Myers Jaffe weighs the risks and return of drilling in the arctic.
An Idea Whose Time Has Come
It's not just Obama -- the entire world is ready to get serious about climate change.
Global energy experts Amy Myers Jaffe and Danielle Sperling share an exciting revelation in this Foreign Policy piece, “the entire world is ready to get serious about climate change.”
Texas Man Takes Last Stand Against Keystone XL Pipeline
NPR story about efforts to block the Keystone XL pipeline quotes Amy Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability: “It feels very invasive, but the reality is that it happens all around the United States. It’s not limited to just Texas . . .The bottom line is, it’s public good because we use so much oil in this country that we cannot afford in our current lifestyle to turn down infrastructure. We’re all participating in that by getting in our car.”
Green California to Vie With Texas as U.S. Oil Heartland: Energy
California, even as it seeks to be the greenest U.S. state, stands a good chance of emerging as the nation’s top oil producer in the next decade, helping America toward what once seemed an unlikely goal of energy independence.
“There’s a strident environmental community that’s always very concerned about the possibility of ecological damage,” says Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director for energy and sustainability at the University of California-Davis. “It’s going to be a much more intense operating environment” for companies drilling in sensitive areas.
American Bull
The New York Times op-ed on U.S. energy independence by Roger Cohen quotes Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability: “This is a transformative development . . .We see ourselves increasingly as this weakened country dependent on faraway events. But as we become energy independent our sense of our own power and freedom of movement will change — and with it our foreign policy in ways that are hard to predict. Oil is a different issue when it is not your own problem anymore.”
Global Energy Industry Insights and Solutions: Dean Steven Currall Interviews Amy Jaffe, Executive Director of Energy and Sustainability
As energy policy takes center stage internationally in economics, national security and the geopolitical landscape, Dean Steven Currall poses these key questions to Amy Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability for the Graduate School of Management and the Institute of Transportation Studies:
The Future of Oil, Coal, and Gas Under Obama
Energy companies spent more than $115 million on the presidential campaign and 80 percent of those funds went to the Republican Party. However, President Obama’s reelection may have less of an impact as they believe; Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at UC Davis, says that while there may be new regulations on oil drilling, the additional costs are unlikely to harm profits.
413 Sustainable Business Ventures: Business and Energy
In this class, students will broaden their understanding of sustainability and how it applies to energy-related businesses and products, learn about why sustainability offers business opportunity , and learn to analyze the economic, social, cultural, and political limitations that might affect the implementation and sustainability of technologies/products/businesses. Students will expand their potential as a leader in sustainable business.
Energy and the Obama Re-election:
Good for Energy Independence but Clean Tech Path Needs Revamp
Written by Amy Myers Jaffe
The reelection of President Barack Obama is good news for the U.S. pursuit of energy independence. That’s because the President is unlikely to take any major steps to ban shale drilling operations in the United States but is more likely than contender Mitt Romney to stay the course on accelerated time lines for higher efficiency standards (CAFE) to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025
Believe It or Not, Social Responsibility and Green Advocacy Can Improve Oil Company Stock Performance
Written by Amy Myers Jaffe
Authors Paul Griffin and Yuan Sun demonstrate in their new paper a reliable association between companies’ CSR disclosure intensity and political interests. The authors work supports the notion that when the political interests of managers and stakeholders noticeably converge it encourages significantly higher voluntary CSR intensity.
U.S. Fuel Exports Grow to Historic Levels
Energy expert Amy Myers Jaffe said fuel exporting removes gasoline and diesel that would otherwise be available to the market to mitigate price spikes.
“There is no such thing as ’surplus gasoline,’” said Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at UC Davis. “It’s a little like saying you are only going to take water from the shallow end of the pool. If I take water out, there is less water in the pool.”
UCSC researchers receive $4.5 million sustainable energy grant
Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have been awarded a five-year $4.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund clean energy research and educational programs.
The grant will build on a partnership the university has with UC Davis and two Danish universities.
Should Washington Block the Keystone Pipeline?
The proposal for a pipeline to carry oil extracted from tar sands in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. is likely to remain a focus of political debate in this election season.
New Alignments?
The Geopolitics of Gas and Oil Cartels and the Changing Middle East
Testimony of Amy Myers Jaffe
Since 2004, a growing scarcity of energy commodities worldwide has heightened concerns about key geopolitical risks and threats. Concerns about these threats and other factors have led to an almost 250 percent strengthening in oil prices between April 2004 ($36/barrel) and May 2008 ($125/bbl).
The Problem: Oil Dependency
Flip the Switch
Nearly all the world’s oil will soon be in the hands of unreliable autocrats. It’s time we went electric.
The Status of World Oil Reserves
Conventional and Unconventional Resources in the Future Supply Mix
By Amy Myers Jaffe, Kenneth B. Medlock III & Ronald Soligo
Iraqi Oil Potential and Implications for Global Oil Markets and Opec Politics
By Jareer Elass & Amy Myers Jaffe
Energy Security
Meeting the Growing Challenge of National Oil Companies
by Matthew E. Chen and Amy Myers Jaffe
Are Obama Policies Aiding Hugo Chavez’s OPEC Regime?
Venezuela ranks fourth as a supplier of U.S. oil imports after Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. But, the United States could have gotten these oil imports from our northern neighbor, Canada, as early as next year if the Obama Administration had approved the Keystone XL pipeline when first requested to do so.
The role of inventories in oil market stability
Generally, in many countries, market forces determine the process of setting up inventories and the determination of their size. Producers, consumers and speculators will arbitrage prices so that it will be profitable for someone to hold inventories to moderate fluctuations in the balance between production and consumption—if indeed it is profitable to do so. Similarly, the extent to which producers maintain excess production capacity is a decision made by individual producers based on the profitability of doing so.
Want to Know More: Oil
David Victor, Amy Myers Jaffe, and Mark Hayes ask whether natural gas could be the “new oil,” in Natural Gas and Geopolitics: From 1970 to 2040 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). “Not just because I was an editor,” Jaffe adds, “this is the best and only book on this important topic.”
Flip the Switch
Nearly all the world's oil will soon be in the hands of unreliable autocrats. It's time we went electric.
Slowly, quietly, the oil world has been transformed. The major international oil companies that dominated energy markets throughout the latter half of the 20th century — the ExxonMobils, BPs, and Royal Dutch Shells — now own less than 10 percent of the world’s oil and gas. They’ve been pushed aside by government-controlled national oil companies, which now command close to 80 percent of the world’s remaining oil reserves, overwhelmingly dominate oil production and pricing, and aren’t afraid to flex their geopolitical muscle.
Syria Assad’s Flirty Emails to his Ambassador’s Daughter Israel The Israel-Gaza Twitter War Libya French/Qatari Arms Transferred to Rebels? Chavez the pragmatist? Forget about it
Hugo Chavez is being practical, but don't expect it to last.
Venezuela’s launch of a new bidding round for foreign direct investment in its oil-rich Orinoco Belt region this past December, and Hugo Chavez’s decision last week to allow Western energy companies to bid for them, signals a reality check for international oil players. Despite all the hullabaloo about resource nationalism, re-nationalization, and energy weapons, there is nothing like a good market correction to focus the mind.
NOCs: Need for energy is driving force behind global thirst for assets
Many of the national oil companies have “become more nimble in the last decade,” agrees Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. She says that “investor scrutiny” faced by government-led companies raising funds from international financial markets has “corporaised them.”
Subpriming the Pump
Oil wealth used to hurt only those who had it. Now, it's hurting everyone.
For years, oil wealth was mostly a danger to those, paradoxically, who possessed it. Resource-rich Middle Eastern countries, and their labor-exporting neighbors, failed for decades to invest adequately in their people or to diversify their economies. A massive influx of oil receipts and worker remittances discouraged investment in sectors conducive to steady long-term growth, fostered corruption and patronage, inflated regional real estate and stock markets, and provided irresistible incentives for governments to spend with wasteful, shortsighted abandon.
The Americas, Not the Middle East, Will Be the World Capital of Energy
For half a century, the global energy supply’s center of gravity has been the Middle East. This fact has had self-evidently enormous implications for the world we live in — and it’s about to change.
Keystone Kops
Environmentalists picked the wrong battle in opposing the Keystone XL project.
The polarizing debate about whether the United States should issue a permit for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would pipe crude from oil sands near Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast, is an almost surreal lesson in issue-framing. The pipeline has become a political football in an election season: Republicans have used it as a cudgel to paint President Barack Obama as a job-killer, while the White House hails it as a rare victory for environmentalists at a time when much of its climate change agenda has stalled.
Climate Change
This house believes that tackling climate change means leaving fossil fuels behind completely and quickly
Thinking about effective responses to climate change, one needs to consider the possible. It is not whether we “should” or “want” to leave fossil fuels behind, the question really is whether we can leave fossil fuels behind. – Amy Myers Jaffe
A Reality Check on Renewables
Amy Myers Jaffe is the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. She is co-author of “Oil, Dollars, Debt and Crises: The Global Curse of Black Gold.”
Shale Gas Will Rock the World
Over the past decade, a wave of drilling around the world has uncovered giant supplies of natural gas in shale rock. We’ve always known the potential of shale; we just didn’t have the technology to get to it at a low enough cost. Now new techniques have driven down the price tag—and set the stage for shale gas to become what will be the game-changing resource of the decade.
BBC Newshour
Energy Debate Special from the Port of Houston
Oil Leak Drama Draws Public Outrage, Outpouring of Ideas
MARGARET WARNER: Today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that shifting winds will spread the oil eastward toward Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Moreover, the Atlantic hurricane season begins tomorrow.
Point Person
Our Q and A with energy expert Amy Jaffe
The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is shaping up to becoming one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, so we asked Amy Jaffe, a renowned energy expert at Rice University, to share her thoughts on oil industry safety and the political and business challenges. A Princeton University graduate in Arabic studies, her research has focused on oil geopolitics and strategic energy policy.
Fundamentals of a Sustainable U.S. Biofuels Policy
The History of U.S. Relations with OPEC
Lessons to Policymakers
Energy Forum
Baker Institute Policy Report 48
The Future of Oil in Mexico
Throughout the 20th century, Mexico has been one of the world’s major oil producers and exporters. As the petroleum supply declines, it must be soundly managed to benefit the Mexican citizenry.
Publication date: June 30, 2011
Shale Gas and U.S. National Security
By Peter R. Hartley, Ph.D., Amy Myers Jaffe and Kenneth B. Medlock, Ph.D.
Iraqi Oil Potential and Implications for Global Oil Markets and OPEC Politics
By Jareer Elass and Amy Myers Jaffe
The Americas, Not the Middle East, Will Be the World Capital of Energy
Technological advances have made energy sources in Canada, the United States and Latin America more economical to pursue.
Published in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy. Publication date: August 15, 2011
Baker Institute Policy Report 49
Shale Gas and U.S. National Security
The Status of World Oil Reserves
Conventional and Unconventional Resources in the Future Supply Mix
By Amy Myers Jaffe, Kenneth B. Medlock III, Ph.D. and Ronald Soligo, Ph.D.
The Future of Oil
The Arab Awakening and the Great Petro-Squeeze
The international oil industry has a long history of interruption from political turmoil, and the current uprisings in the Arab World have already made their dent in oil prices. What does the future hold for markets that rely on the petrodollar?
Published Oct. 27, 2011, in The Majalla. Publication date: October 27, 2011
The Rise of China and Its Energy Implications
Executive Summary
New Alignments?
The Geopolitics of Gas and Oil Cartels and the Changing Middle East
By Songying Fang, Ph.D., Amy Myers Jaffe and Ted Temzelides, Ph.D.
The Spoils of Oil
Oil's Divisive Influence: The Case of Iraq
The future economic security of Iraq rests upon the management of its natural resources, but an acrimonious dispute between the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan and the central government in Baghdad threatens to destabilize more than just Iraq’s economy.
Published May 17, 2012, by The Majalla magazine. Publication date: May 17, 2012
The Arab Awakening and the Pending Oil Pinch
by Amy Myers Jaffe and Keily Miller
The Geopolitics of Energy Project
The Geopolitics of Natural Gas
Report of Scenarios Workshop of Harvard University’s Belfer Center and Rice University’s Baker Institute Energy Forum
Co-directors Amy Myers Jaffe & Meghan L. O’Sullivan
America’s Real Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Is relying on Saudi Arabia in times of war a smart tradition or future folly?
Energy Forum director Amy Myers Jaffe asks, is relying on Saudi Arabia in times of war a smart tradition or future folly? Published Aug. 24, 2012, in Foreign Policy.
Publication date: August 24, 2012
Video: Where I see the conflict lines coming in the oil market in the current economic crisis and the geopolitics of today.
Watch a Jaffe speech: “Where I see the conflict lines coming in the oil market in the current economic crisis and the geopolitics of today.” March 2012
CNN: Rising gas prices are starting to affect the 2012 elections
Amy Jaffe energy expert and speaker, Collaborative Agency Group
Watch Jaffe on CNN: “Rising gas prices are starting to affect the 2012 elections.” Her comments are at 1:35 and 2:40 in the video clip. March 2012
Energy Firms Move Forward With Alaska Pipeline
Alaskan natural gas will face stiff competition for customers in Asian markets, says Amy Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at UC Davis GSM. “My sense is that Alaska LNG has a lot of competition to Asia and they do not have a first mover advantage.”
Amy Jaffe Awards
Global Energy Expert Amy Jaffe to Join UC Davis, Bridging Academia and Energy Industry
Davis, CA) – Amy Myers Jaffe, a leading expert on the oil industry and influential thought leader on global energy policy, has joined the University of California, Davis, strengthening the university’s leadership on clean technology, sustainable energy and transportation.