Quotes from Daniel Yergin

First, we have to find a common vocabulary for energy security. This notion has a radically different meaning for different people. For Americans it is a geopolitical question. For the Europeans right now it is very much focused on the dependence on imported natural gas.

So the major obstacle to the development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics, investment and technology.

The Russians are turning east to the Chinese - to the Europeans' surprise. It always seemed to me that the relationship between Russia and China would shift from being based in Marx and Lenin to being based in oil and gas.

People always underestimate the impact of technology. To give you an example: In the 1970s the frontier for offshore development was 200 meters, today it is 4 000 meters.

A wise old owl lived in an oak, The more he saw the less he spoke, The less he spoke, the more he heard, Why aren't we all like that old bird?

The Western world, he believed, was afflicted by the curse of short-term thinking, the inevitable result of democracy.

The battlefields of World War I established the importance of petroleum as an element of national power when the internal combustion machine overtook the horse and the coal-powered locomotive.

The United States generates less than 1 percent of the plastic waste in oceans. About 90 percent of river-sourced plastic pollution in the oceans comes from uncontrolled dumping into ten rivers in Asia and Africa, which, if properly managed, could dramatically reduce the wastage. Plastic bags and straws may be the most visible use of plastics, but they constitute less than 2 percent of plastics.

An important United Nations environmental conference went past 6:00 in the evening when the interpreters' contracted working conditions said they could leave. They left, abandoning the delegates unable to talk to each other in their native languages. The French head of the committee, who had insisted on speaking only in French throughout the week suddenly demonstrated the ability to speak excellent English with English-speaking delegates.

The author points to the impact of what he called Dutch disease, where the discovery of found wealth from a particular commodity causes a culture to atrophy with respect to work ethic and broader development. Continuing wealth from the single commodity is taken for granted. The government, flush with wealth, is expected to be generous. When the price of that commodity drops, a government which would remain in power dare not cut back on this generosity.

Once upon a time, automobiles were central to romantic life. It was once estimated that almost 40 percent of marriages in America were proposed in automobiles. Today, a third of marriages result from meeting up online and through dating apps.

Simplicity rules everything worth while, and whenever I have been up against a business proposition which, after taking thought, I could not reduce to simplicity, I have realized that it was hopelessly wrong and I have let it alone.

Mastery itself was the prize of the venture."1

What, then, is the future of the $5 trillion global oil and gas industry that supplies almost 60 percent of world energy? The industry will continue to need to find and develop another three to five billion barrels a year just to make up for the natural decline in oil fields, which happens after a field has been in production for some time. The International Energy Agency estimates that over $20 trillion of investment in oil and gas development will be required over the next two decades.

Ride hailing does not necessarily mean few total miles driven. On the contrary, it can well mean increased mileage driven, as the accessibility and convenience stimulate more usage of vehicles—fewer people taking the bus or the subway and more people in individual cars, albeit driven by someone else.

So often, over the history of the oil industry, it is said that technology has gone about as far as it can and that the "end of the road" for the oil industry is in sight. And then, new innovations dramatically expand capabilities. This pattern would be repeated again and again.

In August 2018, Yamal LNG dispatched its first cargo to China, going east along the Arctic coast, through the ice of the Northern Sea Route. Yamal LNG had come in on time and on budget. The Financial Times observed another noteworthy aspect of the project. "No other business venture," it said, "better illustrates Russia's resilience in the face of international sanctions.

The first energy transition began in Britain in the thirteenth century with the shift from wood to coal. Rising populations and destruction of forests made wood scarce and expensive, and coal came to be used for heating in London, despite fumes and smell.

We have got to find a a new plan of attacking it. Something that will show clearly not only the magnitude of the industries and commercial developments, and the changes they have brought in various parts of the country, but something which will make clear the great principles by which industrial leaders are combining and controlling these resources.

It is certainly to be regretted that we have so many things to do and our business day is so fully occupied that somehow or other we seem to make mistakes which could have been avoided if we had really spent the time necessary to think the matter through to a logical conclusion.

But with the new sanctions, the Western companies had to drop out. As the Russian engineer observed, Western companies were "afraid to touch the Bazhenov as if it were a fire."9

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship." Energetic

By 2050, natural gas demand is estimated to be 60 percent higher than it is today.

the sanctions probably have set back the Bazhenov development by half a decade or more. But in an era of oversupply and extensive conventional opportunity in Russia, such a delay is not such a bad thing from Russia's own point of view.