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.
Political changes are shaping the outlook in many of South America’s smaller and emerging oil and gas producers, while the oil price collapse and economic decline due to the global coronavirus pandemic are generating uncertainty for the sector. 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 the outlook for investment in these countries and how political developments are likely to impact producers in the region.
Until recently Mexico stood out within Latin America as a top potential producer of wind and solar energy, but policies under the López Obrador administration have made the climate for renewable energy investment increasingly hostile. Lisa Viscidi, director of the Energy Program, and Sarah Phillips, program assistant, sat down with Nathaniel Parish Flannery of Forbes to discuss what’s ahead for Mexico’s renewable resource sector.
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.
