Brenda Shaffer offers intelligence and government analysts a practical guide to using energy data. She shows how figures on production, trade flows, and prices can inform political, economic, and risk assessments, especially for major oil and gas exporting states in the Middle East and beyond.
The guide draws on her work with government research units and NATO-sponsored energy security courses, where she found that even NATO member states vary widely in how they collect and apply energy data.
She walks through specific applications: using energy data to sharpen understanding of a country’s broader political and economic trajectory, to forecast energy trends like supply, demand, and prices, and to anticipate how shifts in energy revenue are likely to shape a producing state’s foreign policy and domestic stability.
