ABSTRACT
Energy security is a nebulous and contested concept. As demonstrated by the various issues addressed in this book, it is only one aspect of broader environmental security studies, but it has often been dealt with independently due to its central importance to the modern industrialized state. Unlike other environmental security issues energy security has a long history as a matter that has exercised both security analysts and national policy makers. Energy security concerns dominated global headlines following the oil shocks of the 1970s, but low fossil fuel prices for the subsequent two decades reduced its significance for both the public and political decision makers. With the return of high oil and commodity prices since the turn of the century, energy security as a concept is once more at the top of the global agenda: ‘Lawyers, bankers, brokers, economists, geographers, geologists, engineers and journalists speak of energy security with the same confidence as generals, development workers, defence analysts or environmental activists.’1
