Since 2005, the UK has been a net importer of oil, which constitutes 32% of its energy consumption. Unless new North Sea fields are brought on-line and until alternative sources are fully developed, the UK’s energy security will be hostage to events beyond its control. Some of the threats are foreseeable—booming Asian economies competing for scarce energy resources. Others such as the Libyan conflict, which has sent the price of oil rocketing, are unpredictable. For now and the foreseeable future, energy security lies at the heart of foreign policy. Imperial College’s Energy Society brings together leading experts from academia, industry and government to debate the impact of recent events in global energy markets on international relations and UK foreign policy. Following the speakers’ presentations, a discussion will take place with participants from the energy industry, staff and students of Imperial College, and relevant UK government departments.
Speaker biographies
Neil Hirst is Senior Policy Fellow in Energy Mitigation and Climate Change at the Grantham Institute. Until 2009 he was the Director for Global Energy Dialogue at the International Energy Agency and, prior to that, the IEA’s Director for Energy Technology. In these roles he pioneered the IEA’s work with the G8 on climate mitigation strategy as well as developing the IEA’s publications on technology policy, including Energy Technology Perspectives. Before that Neil was for many years a senior UK government official with responsibilities for national and international energy policy issues working at the Department of Trade and Industry (now part of DECC).
John V. Mitchell is an Associate Research Fellow at Chatham House, Research Adviser at the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies, and Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at the University of Dundee. In November 2007 he received a lifetime achievement award for research from King Abdullah at the opening of the 3rd OPEC Summit in Riyadh. He retired in 1993 from British Petroleum where his posts included Special Adviser to the Managing Directors, Regional Co-ordinator for BP’s subsidiaries in the Western Hemisphere, and head of BP’s Policy Review Unit. Mitchell has also written extensively on the geopolitics of oil with a focus on the Middle East and Asia.
Andrew Dobbie has worked in various UK Government roles for over 20 years, in the Department of Trade and Industry, Cabinet Office and since 2008 in the Department of Energy and Climate Change in the international energy security team. He is responsible there for policy towards oil markets and fossil fuel subsidies and coordinating DECC’s interest in the work of the G8 and the G20, and worked on the London Energy Meeting in 2008 and on the Wicks review of international energy security in 2009. From 2003-4 he was a student in Imperial’s full-time MBA programme.