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Research projects
The Institute's research program includes the following:
Oil and Terror: IAGS monitors the link between oil and terrorist activity throughout the world.
The project tracks misuse of oil revenues, illegal terrorist financing and terrorist sponsorship by oil-producing countries. The project also focuses on terrorist threats against vulnerable oil infrastructure targets such as tankers, oilrigs and pipelines.
The Cost of Oil: A project designed to increase public awareness to the
true cost of our oil economy. This project aims to help
the public think differently about the cost of oil by analyzing direct and
indirect costs.
Set America Free©: The Set America Free coalition brings together prominent individuals and non-profit organizations from across the political spectrum, all concerned about the security and economic implications of America's growing dependence on oil. Members of the coalition are unified in their belief that in order to ensure our national safety and our economic security we must break the monopoly of oil in the transportation sector. Set America Free promotes a Blueprint for Energy Security, which spells out practical ways in which real progress toward energy security and fuel choice can be made over the next several years. The Blueprint is a result of a comparative analysis of the various technologies available today to reduce oil dependency. The project analyzed the costs and benefits, time frame for commercialization, feasibility, and economic impact of each path to energy independence.
Democracy and Oil in the Developing World: IAGS tracks the impact of the discovery and exploration of oil and gas in African and Central Asian countries on the prospects for democracy and human rights in these societies. IAGS works to enhance transparency of payments made by oil, gas and mining companies to governments involved in domestic unrest and human rights violations.
China thirst for oil: implications for global security: IAGS examines the impact of China's rise and its growing oil dependence on future U.S.-China relations and global security at large.
Mobility Choice:
The array of problems associated with petroleum dependence require that as we work to break oil’s virtual monopoly over the transportation sector by expanding fuel choice, we also enable mobility options beyond the highway system. This can be done through a shift to a user-pays highway funding structure, ending the preferential tax subsidies for private vehicle commuting in relation to public transit, focus on oil savings as a metric for evaluating transit funding requests, encouragement of virtual mobility, more flexible zoning and other policies. In the coming months, IAGS will become increasingly involved in the policy debate spanning the transportation policy of the U.S. We believe that mobility choice presents a natural meeting of the minds for environmental, security, and fiscal conservative constituencies, and bringing these stakeholders together within the framework of a coalition focused on specific policy recommendations would act as a force multiplier. We believe that by replicating the successful model of the Set America Free Coalition we can mobilize a national force which can bring about change in the way we approach transit.
Strategic Energy Commodities:
Commodities like lithium, cobalt, zinc, copper and rare earth elements will all be needed in large quantities to ensure smooth production of batteries and electric engines necessary for the electrification of transportation. Do we have enough of them? Where are the reserves? What needs to be done to ramp up production? While playing a critical role in moving the country away from oil to alternatives IAGS is already looking over the horizon to the next set of energy dependencies. In the coming months we will publish articles and studies on this issue, brief members of congress and host a conference. IAGS Senior Fellow Jack Lifton will manage the program.
IAGS Journal of Energy Security
IAGS' bimonthly publication highlighting the latest accurate reporting and thoughtful analysis of the nexus between energy and security. Subscribe and receive the Journal of Energy Security by email.
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