Recently, I spoke with an admired acquaintance, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) co-founder Joe Stanislaw, who has taken a position as independent senior advisor to the leadership of Deloitte & Touche USA's energy and natural resources practice. Stanislaw is more recently founder of the advisory firm The JAStanislaw Group LLC, specializing in strategic thinking and investment in energy and technology, and former president and chief executive officer of CERA. An energy advisor, strategist and commentator with 30-plus years of experience, Stanislaw has identified four global trends affecting the oil and gas industry. Creeping nationalism He defines this as the rising competitive power and ambition of the national oil companies versus the rest of the marketplace. Access challenges Here, Stanislaw says the real issue is: do we (foreign players with proven technologies) have access to production capacity in the big resource areas such as Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq and Russia? Can capacity be developed to keep up with demand? "Technology and knowledge are as, if not more, important than money," he says. Energy security Katrina focused attention on our supply vulnerabilities, but political walls create vulnerabilities in the same way. "The challenge is to avoid concentration of resources, in terms of infrastructure as well as political responses to deal with concentration of resources, i.e. Russia's [gas] supply shenanigans with Ukraine." Demand The conservation message needs to encourage efficiency by asking consumers to buy the best technology, not "guilting" them to sacrifice. "How do we convince consumers to buy technology that already exists? What's the behavioral tipping point in the U.S.?" The best form of energy security is energy efficiency, Stanislaw told Oil and Gas Investor. "I'd like to say that President Bush has converted [to that way of thinking], but I'm not sure. The amount of money being applied to energy research [by the U.S. Department of Energy] is small. A lot of it is just moving money around from one thing to another, and even reducing the amount of R&D. Will he commit in a real budgetary sense?" Stanislaw, who commutes between Boston and Paris, says the view from Europe toward the U.S. is, "Let's see some real action. You are the world's biggest energy consumer." On the supply side of the equation, Stanislaw says all the debate and publicity about peak oil has at least gotten people thinking more seriously about energy matters. Adequate oil reserves are still there, he believes, but it is a question of access and putting enough production capacity in place. "It doesn't matter who brings the reserves up-whether it is Japan or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. What matters is who has the political will to do it, and the capital. And timing is key. If global demand suddenly goes up 10%, then what is the capacity out there?" Demand is a moving number. At press time the International Energy Agency reduced slightly its estimate of 2006 global oil demand. But even if high oil prices or a recession tamps demand growth, the base load of barrels needed per day is still far higher than it was three years ago. Longer term, the world's energy needs are expected to be nearly 50% greater by 2030 than they are today, ExxonMobil's new CEO, Rex Tillerson, told analysts last month. Whether this estimate is anywhere near accurate is beside the point, as it's safe to assume that the world will need more energy in the future than it does today. Tillerson said the company is doing its part, with a project inventory at year-end 2005 that will develop 26 billion barrels of oil equivalent net to ExxonMobil. It expects to start up more than 20 new global projects in the next three years to produce more energy. In 2005, ExxonMobil delivered a stunning return on capital employed (ROCE) of 31%-superior results by any standard. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin published an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal calling for more energy cooperation among the G-8 countries, dialogue with the fast-growing, industrializing non-G-8, and no "energy egotism" in such an interdependent world. Putin called for a "world energy architecture that would help avoid conflicts and counterproductive competition for energy security [supply]." Architecture, or rather engineering, will come into play more and more as countries try out new technologies that help meet energy needs. Some kind of new world order is dawning when a Texas senator praises a coal-fired project. The Lone Star State is vying for the Department of Energy's FutureGen project-a $1-billion, public-private venture that will build the world's first near-zero-emission coal facility. Co-sponsored by the DOE, it will gasify coal to generate electricity and produce hydrogen, while capturing and storing carbon dioxide in deep geologic formations. Praising Texas' bid for the project, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson said in the same breath that the U.S. needs to reduce dependence on foreign oil, while increasing Texas jobs.