Sarah Phillips joined the Inter-American Dialogue in 2019 as a program assistant for Energy, Climate Change & Extractive Industries. She graduated magna cum laude from the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo with a B.A. in Spanish and international relations, as well as a minor in Latin American studies. While at SUNY Geneseo, Sarah volunteered at the Geneseo Migrant Center and West Side Learning Center and spent a semester abroad in Granada, Spain. After graduating, Sarah taught English at the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia in Pasto, Colombia, on a Fulbright teaching assistantship.
Latin American national oil companies (NOCs) have made important advances in slashing emissions from their operations through techniques such as reducing flaring, improving energy efficiency, and injecting CO2 for enhanced oil recovery, according to a new report by the Inter-American Dialogue and the Inter-American Development Bank. Yet, progress in producing lower carbon energy sources for consumers has been sluggish, no Latin American NOC has committed to net zero emissions, and for some companies emissions are on the rise, the report finds.
The US has introduced several measures to facilitate energy & infrastructure investment in Latin America. However, the impact will likely be constrained by the challenging investment environment in many Latin American countries, demonstrating the limitations for the US in competing with China’s centralized economic model.
Political changes are shaping the outlook in many of South America’s smaller and emerging oil and gas producers, including Guyana, Suriname, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. At a webinar co-hosted by the Inter-American Dialogue and the National Capital Area Chapter of the United States Association for Energy Economics (NCAC-USAEE), panelists discussed how political developments and the oil price decline are likely to impact producers in the region.
For over a decade Colombians have been debating whether or not to allow oil companies to use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to produce oil and gas from shale rock, a technique that has been controversial in many countries. The high court’s decision last week to uphold a moratorium on fracking suggests the increasingly polarized debate is far from over.
