What Are the Reasons Behind the Soaring Gas Prices?
As the Northern Hemisphere has moved into winter, the current worldwide surge in energy prices has raised fears of an energy crisis with serious implications. The focus of this brief Instant Insight is twofold. First, we provide a brief overview of the current energy market. We then discuss the potential short- and long-term implications for users of natural gas, both residential and industrial. The analysis highlights that, although the world debated reducing investment in fossil fuels at COP26 in Glasgow, OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) and its partners have had to deal with calls from major energy consumers to increase production to curb the current price trend.
Research LeadDr. Raed is a Research Lead and an Economist in the Oil & Gas program, with a particular interest in…
Dr. Raed is a Research Lead and an Economist in the Oil & Gas program, with a particular interest in industrial development, economic diversification, and econometric modeling. He has worked with different types of econometric modeling techniques on different projects, especially in the field of economic diversification, oil prices and oil demand modeling. Prior to joining KAPSARC, he worked for Standard & Poor’s analytics and Capital IQ division in S&P’s headquarters in the financial district of New York, Wall Street, where he was involved in designing the first probability of default model tailored to the Saudi economy. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Southern Illinois University and was awarded a Master of Science in Economics from California State Polytechnic University. The title of his Ph.D. dissertation was “Economic Diversification: The Case of Saudi Arabia with Reference to Rich Natural Resource Countries.” He was assigned to lead KAPSARC's long-term sectoral oil demand forecast and outlook projects as a portfolio project manager. Through those projects, Dr. Raed, along with the rest of the project leads, was successful in developing forecasting models that forecast the long-term oil demand in different sectors (land transportation sector, maritime sector, aviation sector, petrochemical sector, residential/commercial building sector, agricultural sector, and power sector). Furthermore, Dr. Raed is a lead modeler of a project dedicated to forecasting the oil demand stemming from petrochemical feedstocks. He represented KAPSARC as a speaker at multiple conferences organized by the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE) and workshops organized by the Office of the Economic and Development Affairs Commission (EDAC) of The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC). Dr. Raed was recently appointed by the Board of Trustees of Riyadh Economic Forum as a supervising member of a study titled “Maximizing the Economic Revenue from Natural Resources to Achieve Sustainable Development.” Dr. Raed worked in KAPSARC as a T20 Events and Logistics Leader. He has made signicant contribution by being the first Saudi to teach applied econometrics at the newly eatblished KAPSARC Academy to facilatiate one of their acceleration programs in collaboration with LUISS Business School. Apart of Dr. Raed ’s academic, research, and advisory work he was a key member of an organizational restructuring team to develop KAPSARC’s training and learning & development programs (TASAMI) to build human capital capacity.
Fellow IIwas a full professor of economics at Lille Catholic University and director of the Smart & Sustainable Cities research unit.…was a full professor of economics at Lille Catholic University and director of the Smart & Sustainable Cities research unit. Fateh has also held various positions at the French Scientific and Technical Center for Building and led multiple collaborative projects for the French Ministry of Ecological Transition and the European Commission. He is an energy and environmental economist drawing from the fields of applied microeconomics, energy modeling, and econometrics.
He has published widely on household energy consumption, energy-saving behaviors, individual preference and investment in energy efficiency, energy poverty, renewables, and energy policy. He received a habilitation for supervising doctoral research from Orléans University, a Ph.D. in Economics, an M.S. in Applied Economics & Decision Theory from Littoral University, and an engineering degree in statistics.
His work has been published in journals including Ecological Economics, The Energy Journal, Energy Economics, Economic Surveys, Energy Policy, and Environmental Management
Expertise
Energy and Environmental Economics; Energy Efficiency; Energy Demand; Fuel Poverty; Energy Policy; Energy Saving Behaviors; Applied Econometrics; Smart and Sustainable Cities.
