New Global Safety and Regulations in Global Energy

Introduction: Safety and Regulations in Global Energy

Economic development has always depended on the application of new technologies in the production of new products and improved productivity. This has been particularly so since the beginning of the industrial revolution without much attention given to safety particularly when deleterious side effects could not be detected easily and left future generations to deal with it. The democratization of societies, higher education for what might be called the ordinary citizen, environmentalism and huge danger of some new technologies such as nuclear have in recent years resulted in critical eyes focusing on safety more intensely and demanding appropriate regulations in order to avoid catastrophes even at the expense of higher economic development. This has increasingly been evident in the field of energy. In the USA energy safety issues have become especially important because of the so-called Shale Revolution which has turned the country into an exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) because of vast new reserves of shale-gas with prices at about 1/3 of gas in Europe and rapid production increases in shale oil which is rapidly replacing conventional oil imports. The Shale Revolution has raised safety and environmental concerns as described below. The paper describes environmental and safety problems in other energy sources as well as background for the debate, which is already in progress.