Next 2 decades are ‘about gas’

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Participants in the Marmara Group Foundation’s roundtable discussion on energy are seen during a presentation. Courtesy of Marmara Group

Natural gas will take the lead in energy markets in the next two decades, according to Edward Chow, an instructor at the Elliott School for International Affairs at George Washington University.

“The next twenty years will be about gas,” Chow said, speaking at a roundtable discussion titled “Will the ‘Arab Spring’ be a ‘Consumer’s Harsh Winter’?,” organized by the Marmara Group Foundation and held on Sept. 15 in Istanbul.

“Oil prices are suffering not just because of the Arab Spring. No country in which a revolution took place later saw an increase in oil and gas production,” said Chow.

The discussion featured Dr. Hilmi Güler, the former Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, acting as moderator. Other panel members were Necdet Pamir, a lecturer at Bilkent University and a senior advisor at StratejiCo, a business-consulting firm, and Dr. Bülent Alirıza, director of the Turkey Project at the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The discussion focused on the most recent developments in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), particularly the Arab Spring, and their impact on the energy environment of Eurasia and Turkey.
“Turkey is too dependent on imports, while leaving behind its natural resources, which could readily be used for its own energy consumption,” Pamir said.

This event was meant to serve as a precursor to the 16th-annual Eurasian Economic Summit, which will be held April 9-11, 2013, in Istanbul. k HDN