This post was written by James Coan, Research Associate at the Baker Institute Energy Forum. Yesterday, President Obama announced the most important energy policy of his administration, finalizing fuel economy standards through model year (MY) 2025 that should roughly double the efficiency of new vehicles as compared to when he took office. This highly popular [...]  More »

As oil prices ticked above $115 per barrel last week, a White House leak revealed that President Barack Obama may dip into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the United States’ 695 million barrel stockpile of emergency fuel supplies. The leak might have been a signal that Washington wants Gulf countries to take action to lower [...]  More »

This post was written by James Coan, Research Associate at the Baker Institute Energy Forum. New research shows that the percentage of Americans with driver’s licenses continues to decline, further justifying the often-repeated argument that U.S. gasoline consumption has peaked. Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found that [...]  More »

This post was written by Isidro Morales, Professor at the Santa Fe campus of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) in Mexico City. Most probably, on December 1st, Mr. Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN), the presidential candidate of PRI party, will become the new Mexican president for a six year term. The PRI [...]  More »

This post was written by Kenneth B. Medlock III, the James A. Baker, III, and Susan G. Baker Fellow in Energy and Resource Economics at the Baker Institute Energy Forum. US domestic price impacts of LNG exports have been overblown and their commercial risks understated, a new report by the Baker Institute concludes. The report [...]  More »

This post was written by James Coan, research associate at the Baker Institute Energy Forum. In the wake of the record drought affecting much of the country, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released on Friday an extremely pessimistic paper projecting much lower production of corn and soybeans this year. The report is sure to [...]  More »

This post was written by James Coan, Research Associate at the Baker Institute Energy Forum. While we’re in Alaska, we keep hearing the same joke that if Alaska were split in two, Texas would be the third largest state. It turns out that when it comes to oil production, there’s a new state that’s fallen [...]  More »

As a continent, Europe has been a global leader in climate policy, international conflict resolution, and global security. But Europe now stands at a difficult crossroads: it faces the task of revitalizing faltering economies and resolving a global debt crisis. Portugal, a global leader in renewable energy, is a particularly interesting case in which national [...]  More »

As Memorial Day and the summer driving season approach, American drivers can take to heart –albeit temporarily – that gasoline prices are slightly lower than they were at this time last year. Gasoline prices are also less than they were at this time in 2008, the year when prices spiked above $4/gallon. The AAA Daily [...]  More »

The future economic security of Iraq rests upon the management of its natural resources, but a festering dispute between the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan and the central government in Baghdad threatens to destabilize more than just Iraq’s economy, according to an article published in The Majalla last week on “Oil’s Divisive Influence: The Case [...]  More »

Recent estimates from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) show that emissions of air pollutants that harm human health in the Houston region are falling dramatically.  More »

This post was written by Lavanya Sunder, who worked as an at the Baker Institute Energy Forum and is now a senior at Lamar High School. One of the most prominent arguments against expanded oil and natural gas drilling and major infrastructure projects like Keystone XL is that the United States should for environmental reasons [...]  More »