Nate Graham joined the Inter-American Dialogue in 2018 as the program assistant for Energy, Climate Change & Extractive Industries. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.A. in political science and economics and a minor in environmental studies. While at Washington University, Nate spent a semester studying at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and interning at the US Foreign Commercial Service in Santiago, where he focused on the mining and automotive sectors. His articles have been published in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and World Politics Review. He speaks English and Spanish and has intermediate proficiency in Portuguese.
The development of energy resources is an integral component of many of Latin America’s economies, from established producers like Colombia and Brazil to newcomers to the global energy market like freshly oil-rich Guyana. However, policymakers and energy companies throughout the region must devise solutions to a variety of fiscal, political, social, and environmental hurdles to ensure successful and sustainable projects, explained speakers at an Inter-American Dialogue event on May 10.
A lack of transmission-line maintenance may have been the immediate trigger for the power outage that left much of Venezuela in darkness on March 7, but it is a symptom of almost two decades of government mismanagement that has debilitated Venezuela’s power sector, draining its reserves of both human and financial capital and nudging it towards collapse.
Regulators and private companies will continue to play important roles in the development of Mexico’s energy resources despite President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s focus on strengthening state-owned companies and enhancing “energy sovereignty” by reducing dependence on energy imports from the United States. This was the key message from speakers at “La nueva política energética de México,” an Inter-American Dialogue event in Mexico City.
