Last month, the Financial Times reported that Goldman Sachs-backed Cobalt International Energy had partnered up with a local Angolan company as it sought rights to drill a world-class offshore oilfield. The company to which Cobalt offered the equity stake was partly owned by three senior Angolan officials, the FT wrote. Three months ago, Houston-based Cobalt went on to declare a discovery in a well called Cameia-1. Now, U.S. authorities are investigating Cobalt. [Update: Cobalt responds below.]

Angola has received much attention on the issue of payoffs in recent months. Global Witness, the U.K.-based investigative firm, has issued a report about $550 million in "social payments" provided to the state-owned oil company Sonangal by Cobalt, BP and a private Angolan-Hong Kong joint venture.

But this is just the way the oil business works on the frontier, as I write today at The New Republic. In December 2010, for example, Halliburton paid $35 million to Nigeria to settle a bribery case involving a big liquefied natural gas project that had drawn in former Vice President Dick Cheney. And not just the oil business - what makes the subject topical right now is a New York Times allegation of extensive bribery by Wal-Mart in Mexico.

I started looking at the phenomenon while based on the Caspian Sea in the 1990s. At the time, oil executives' faces would go uncomfortably pale when you mentioned a certain known go-between for bribes to senior Azerbaijan officials. In Kazakhstan, feet would shuffle and voices get rattled at the mention of James Giffen, the New York lawyer who later was charged with serving as a conduit of foreign oil payoffs to President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Two years ago, Giffen was acquitted in federal court in New York -- he did not contest the facts of the bribery accusations, but said he was innocent because the whole time he was serving his homeland, slipping inside dope to American intelligence agencies.

Things have changed. I talked to Joseph Covington, a Washington lawyer who in the 1980s headed the foreign bribery section at the U.S. Justice Department. He suggested that, unlike just a few years ago, American businessmen are no longer terrified of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which outlaws bribery of foreign officials to obtain business. In the Caspian days, businessmen would fess up to bribery and pay for an extensive internal clean-up to avoid prosecution. That still is usually the case, but after Giffen showed that with the money and the gumption one can beat the FCPA, we are seeing more cases of executives electing to fight.

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By the end of the decade, Israel will probably satisfy all its own natural gas requirements, and become a serious exporter of liquefied natural gas. Argentina might produce the world's third-largest volume of shale oil. Mozambique seems likely to become one of the largest LNG exporters in the world. And the United States may meet most of its own liquid-fuel needs.

Which is to say that the geopolitical fabric with which we have grown up seems to be unraveling in spots, and a new patchwork taking its place in Africa, the Middle East, North and South America, and beyond. Settled power and influence are giving way to a maelstrom of moving parts.

The backdrop is a global revival in the oil and gas business, ignited by energy companies that, after two decades of largely standing still, are finally drilling with purpose. These companies could yet self-destruct if they are not environmentally watchful. Clean-tech could achieve massive advances and economies of scale. But as of now, the colossal hydrocarbons industry -- long the tipping point, and at times the singular force, behind countries becoming rich, or falling behind -- is serving as the weaver of the new geopolitical fabric.

What could geopolitics look like? It is premature to detect concrete shapes, as Citigroup's Ed Morse wrote in a much-read recent note to clients. Yet we can discern outlines of the potential appearance of the new world.

We already know, for example, that the heft of the U.S. shale gas boom has challenged Russia's natural gas grip on Europe. Saudi Arabia also fears shale gas, whose abundance could ultimately contribute to the erosion of U.S. oil demand, as Chris Weafer said last week on this blog (also see remarks below by oil scholar Philip Verleger.).

Saudi has valid reasons to worry, as it seems almost-certain that the fresh big oil finds on other continents will whittle away at the centrality of the mighty nations of OPEC, the bain of Western economies for 35 years. OPEC seems far less likely to call the shots in global oil and, according to Citigroup and other analysts, the per-barrel price its members earn could be much-reduced. The wild card will be demand, meaning China's future oil appetite, and the continued progress of energy efficiency.

Similarly, Russia, the world's other current major oil-exporter, will probably be forced into serious political and economic reforms or face decline. Its government spending is too high, its non-hydrocarbon economy too anemic, and now its oil and gas sectors under challenge.

On the other side of the ledger, numerous heretofore basket-case nations up and down Africa's coasts will have to decide whether to squander their unexpected new petro-fortunes, or build middle classes and stable societies. In addition to Mozambique, that includes Tanzania, Kenya, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivorie, and more. Similar prosperity would be in the line of sight of numerous South American nations.

As for the United States (pictured above, drilling in Pennsylvania), a small but growing number of economists see the potential for a resurgent economy, built on the back of cheap natural gas. Leading the pack is Citigroup's Morse, who in the report cited above says the U.S. may more than halve its budget deficit by 2020, and experience a radical economic "revitalization and reindustrialization."

Likewise, we have a dissection of a coming U.S. boom in the Financial Times from Philip Verleger, who ran the Office of Energy Policy in the Treasury Department during the Carter Administration, and is a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

With all of this turbulence, is it an article of faith that China will rule the world in the second half of the century, as many presume? China still looks on track to have the largest economy, but the many moving parts -- including its challenging demography, as the Economist reports -- make its trajectory seem less certain.

I separately emailed Verleger asking his opinion of the bullish forecasts of shale oil that we are seeing from Morse and others -- what is the data backing up these predictions? Verleger had an answer, but was mostly interested in laying out a case for what he calls a "Kodak Moment" of marginalization for the U.S. oil industry. The email is provocative, and I reprint in full after the Jump.

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What do you do if you have the natural gas equivalent of 6 billion barrels of oil, and no way to get it to a market? And what if you are uncertain that there will ever be a profitable market for this stranded treasure, at least in the coming couple of decades?

If you are Alaska and the Big Oil companies drilling there, you check the numbers, and check them again, but know that ultimately you will be gambling based on the following calculus: In the glutted U.S., natural gas prices are at their lowest in a decade, under $2 per 1,000 cubic feet; in Asia, the same volume of gas is selling for up to ten times that sum, or $20.

So it is that BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil are contemplating spending $40 billion for a liquefied natural gas system to emancipate their natural gas riches on Alaska's North Slope, and shipping it on to Asia, as I have written at EnergyWire.

If they proceed, which seems likely, they will be locked in battle with far-flung gas sellers -- Qatar, Russia, Australia and Mozambique among them -- who are already piling in to take advantage of Asia's high prices and voracious appetite. In particular, they are piling in to China.

Call China the Hub of Hope, the 800-pound gorilla in the whole of the big energy shakeup we are witnessing around the world. Oil demand is contracting in the U.S. and Europe, but it is soaring in China. Natural gas demand is ticking up gradually in these same developed markets, but China's is going up at double-digit annual rates.  

It is this Chinese demand -- and not just political risk associated with Iran -- that is propping up oil prices at over $100 a barrel, as well as Asian gas prices. As long as these conditions keep oil at approximately such levels, you will continue to see a boom in the production of U.S. oil shale and Canadian oil sands, in addition to the excitement in ultra-deep water around the world. Lower those prices substantially, and at least some of the eagerness will go too.

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In a profession that prizes the illusion of reality, Hugo Chavez is one of politics' best -- a consummate actor whose connection with the Venezuelan masses has kept opponents off balance for 13 years. We never know if the Venezuelan president is putting us on.

So is he now?

For the last several months, Venezuelans have witnessed the drama of a cancer-stricken Chavez shuttling back and forth to Cuba for treatment, all the while taunting opponents seeking his ouster in October presidential elections. Last week, they were treated to scenes of the usually feisty Chavez in church, tears rolling down his cheeks, hands clasped in his parents', and beseeching Christ, "Don't take me yet." Meanwhile, a rumor went around that he was giving up on Cuba, and heading imminently for superior treatment in Brazil. Only to turn up yesterday in Havana, where he was met by Raul Castro.

"He is pulling all the stops for sympathy and will likely get it from his support base," a skeptical Stephen Johnson, director of the Latin America program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told me in an email exchange. He said:

Yet what all this theater means is very hard to determine, since few verifiable facts are available on what may be wrong with him. Offers of treatment in Brazil have been spurned before, either because he is not really ill, or because he really believes the best medicine is in Cuba.

We are watching the flow of events in Venezuela in large part because of the potential impact in the greater region, given Chavez's penchant for projecting influence through the use of the country's oil proceeds.

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A long-awaited threshold appears to have finally been reached in U.S. gasoline prices -- the point at which Americans say "enough." And it is strikingly similar to the last time they did so. With average gasoline prices at just under $4 a gallon, American car-buyers -- just as they did in 2008 -- have begun to veer away from gas-guzzling SUVs, and sharply toward efficient vehicles, including much-derided electrified cars.

This inflection point diverges from the conventional wisdom, which is that, four years after enduring $4 gasoline for the first time, Americans are inured to this striking point. Which price would turn their heads -- $5 a gallon? $6? -- was anyone's guess.

Instead, there still appears to be something important about the number 4, according to vehicle sales reported this week. What does it mean? To the degree that prices stay there, overall U.S. gasoline demand will continue to drop, and the country's economics improve. Will we see the emergence of heretofore unseen American tastes, such as a sudden embrace of motor scooters -- in England, motor scooter sales are surging with gasoline prices verging on *gasp* $9.50 a gallon (pictured above, city transport in Ho Chi Minh City).

For now, it is simply more fuel-efficient four-wheeled vehicles. Consider: Last month, cars achieving 30 miles or more a gallon comprised about 44 percent of GM's sales of 231,00 vehicles, which was a record number for the company, reports the Wall Street Journal. Sales of Toyota's hybrid Prius leapt by 54 percent compared with March last year, to a record 28,711 vehicles. Sales of the GM Volt, the punching bag of the Republican Party, soared to a record 2,289, about 50 percent higher than December, the previous high-sales month. All in all, electrified vehicles were the leading growth sector of U.S. car sales in the first quarter of the year, according to Bloomberg, jumping by 49 percent to 117,182 vehicles.

As a result, GM -- which had halted production of the Volt for five weeks because of poor sales -- is lifting the stoppage a week early, and will resume making the car April 16.

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Beijing's irritation with Washington's diplomatic activism in Southeast Asia is understandable -- great powers traditionally seek authority over the sea and land near their shores. But that is secondary. For China, the more important issue is its belief that a bonanza of oil lies beneath the South China Sea. If there are such riches, one of Beijing's premier concerns -- that it have secure access to sufficient natural resources to fuel its surging economy -- could at once shrink, along with China's reliance on the Persian Gulf.

As we speak, southeast Asian leaders are meeting in Phnom Penh, wringing their hands over how to reduce tension with China (pictured above, a show of unity). As suggested, the issue on its face is territorial -- China claims sovereignty over the whole of the South China Sea, across which half the world's seaborne trade travels, an estimated $5 trillion a year. But the actual flashpoint is oil and gas.

Southeast Asian nations, especially the Philippines, are seeking U.S. backing to fend off China as they pursue their own claims to the islands near their shores. The Obama Administration, eager to appear tough against accusations by its opponents of softness against China, has seemed happy to mediate, famously declaring a "pivot" of national interests to Asia.

Yesterday, Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin renewed the war of words by suggesting that China is singling out his country with intimidation tactics because Manila's military is comparatively weak. "We are below par. So of course if you are going to bully, you would look for the weakest," Gazmin said, quoted by the Philippine Daily Inquirer. "You do not get someone who is your equal."

I had a chat with retired U.S. Rear Admiral Mike McDevitt, who said that the main U.S. strategic interests are to maintain naval rights to ply and conduct military exercises in the international sections of these busy waters, and that the territorial battles be settled peaceably.

Always, however, there is oil. If the South China Sea contains as much oil as some experts think, and Chinese companies can obtain access to it, "that would solve [China's] Malacca dilemma," McDevitt said. "They would not be nearly as dependent on the Persian Gulf." He said:

In 10 years it may turn out it isn't such a big deal. ... [But] if there were no resource implications, would everybody be so anxious to stake their claim and argue about sovereignty? Perhaps, but probably not.

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China is becoming cleaner -- ever so slightly. This is because of fresh signs of a surge of Chinese natural gas demand over the next dozen years, which is likely to tamp down the burning of coal, according to Wood Mackenzie, the energy research and consulting firm.  

This does not suggest that China -- the largest source of greenhouse gases on the planet -- is suddenly going pollution-free. But the trend is tidier, WoodMac concludes in a report to be issued shortly. The Edinburgh-based firm released a teaser on the report, and I spoke with two of its three authors today.

Until now, WoodMac estimated that Chinese annual natural gas demand would almost triple -- to about 350 billion cubic meters in 2020 from about 130 billion cubic meters last year. The firm's new estimate is that Chinese annual gas demand will rise to 500 billion cubic meters by 2025, a 42 percent increase from its previous estimate.

Noel Tomnay, who heads WoodMac's global gas team, attributes the shift to a few factors: Greater Chinese intolerance of coal fumes, and increasing personal wealth, which allows Chinese citizens to pay more for cleaner natural gas-fired electricity, particularly in coastal areas; plus a desire by provincial officials for greater energy security when they are less and less sure about the reliability of coal and nuclear power. Tomnay told me:

Our view of China demand is probably higher than anything you'll find from [the International Energy Agency), from BP, from Exxon. We are very bullish on China gas demand. Our view of China gas just keeps getting bigger.

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In a 2006 cover story in FP, the columnist Thomas Friedman described what he called "The First Law of Petropolitics." In it, Friedman revealed an inverse relationship between oil prices and the kindliness of petrocrats: As oil prices surge, the rulers of oil-producing countries tend to become inflated jerks; when prices are low, they are high-minded pussy cats.

Yet for all its genius, Friedman's law is limited: He was talking about pure petro-states such as Russia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Isn't the behavior of freely elected leaders in developed economies influenced by any oil commandments?

I raise this question while observing President Barack Obama and oil companies act upon some other mutually understood political principle in the heat of the election-year campaign: Over the last week or so, American oil giants Chevron (see interview below) and ExxonMobil have suggested that Obama wise up and embrace America's inner-petrostate. Obama has responded by embracing his inner-cudgel, urging oil companies to accept a non-fossil fuel future, and meanwhile surrender $4 billion in tax breaks.

Oil is pivotal in the campaign platform of Obama's opponents. We see this most recently in finger-pointing over gasoline prices. But gasoline is not the operative hothouse for the top-line political battle. Instead, it is a sideshow to the central backdrop, which is the nation's high-stakes oil boom, a projected surge in the U.S. oil supply over the coming decade from shale oil, deepwater Gulf of Mexico reserves and imports from Canada's oil sands.

The opposing sides are capitalizing on high gas prices to advance competing, long-existing agendas -- Big Oil to pry open coveted basins underlying coastal and federal areas, and Obama to keep incubating still-early clean-energy technology.

Toward these aims, the oil industry's strategy is to persuade Americans that these closed-off lands are all that stand between U.S. independence from foreign oil, and continued fealty to those fellows governed by Friedman's First Law. For Obama, it is to contextualize the oil boom as big but historically ephemeral: Americans can bask in their gas-guzzling ways now, but must also begin to pave the way for the inescapable post-hydrocarbon era.

To state this as a corollary, there is a direct relationship between the vigor of an oil boom, and the temperature of high-flown political rhetoric. (Given the apparent hurt feelings afflicting both sides, one observes another active corollary -- a direct association between rising wealth and thinning skin, a sublaw that seems to straddle the oil and financial industries.)

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In 2005, Fu Chengyu, then-CEO of the state-controlled Chinese oil company CNOOC, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, titled, Why is America Worried? Fu (pictured above) intended to reassure Americans that he meant no harm with a bid at the time to buy Unocal, the California-based oil company. But it did no good: Americans were in fact worried about allowing what they regarded as a strategic resource to fall into the hands of a rival country. Instead Chevron, with a lower bid, ended up with Unocal.

Today, Fu, now CEO of another Chinese oil giant called Sinopec, is back in the United States. He has been buying up minority stakes in large unconventional oil fields -- shale gas and shale oil -- through deals with companies like Chesapeake Energy and Devon Energy. The Wall Street Journal says the state-by-state total investment since 2010 between Sinopec and CNOOC has been $17 billion.

So should America again be fearful? The answer is no. Specifically, if the U.S. were presented today with a similar situation in which Sinopec, CNOOC or another big Chinese enterprise bid on a U.S. oil company, it ought to eagerly embrace it.

The reason is that, unlike with IT or other high-tech intellectual property, it is in the United States' strategic interest for China to possess its companies' cutting-edge oilfield technology, specifically how to develop shale gas and shale oil. China will keenly seize on that technology and apply it back home, with the result that pressure will be reduced on global oil prices. On shale gas, because a big find of indigenous gas is one of the only ways in which China will switch out of far dirtier coal in the production of electricity, it would be a strategic achievement if China became a first-rate fracker.

I spoke this morning with an oilman having specific interest in the subject -- John Imle, Unocal's former president. Imle said that a Chinese acquisition of a U.S. energy company -- say, Chesapeake, the second-largest gas player in the country -- would be "all upside" for the U.S. He said:

It's part of globalization and not an unhealthy part. It's positive for humanity because it results in energy supplies that are adequate so we don't have energy wars down the road. And it should provide lower-cost energy globally, which is important for the global economy. So I don't see any downside. It's all up. We want the Chinese to have plenty of gas.

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There is a comforting thought for those alarmed by Vladimir Putin's large electoral triumph, in which he suggested that his opponents are traitors and foreigners out to commandeer the Russian state. It is oil and gas, which while they fuel Putin's confidence, could also step in and serve as a leash on his tendency to over-reach.

Putin's history closely tracks the inclination of petro-rulers to shift from hubris to malleability with the decline of oil prices. Oil and gasoline prices are currently high, but they also seem close to a tipping point at which consumer tolerance could break, demand fall, and prices plunge. Deutsche Bank's Paul Sankey is forecasting a more-than 25 percent long-term plummet from that inflection point, which he puts at $135 a barrel for European-traded Brent crude. If this scenario materializes, look for Putin to revert to a friendlier form.

Are there other under-appreciated aspects to Putin's return to the Kremlin? I asked a few O&G readers specializing on Russia to weigh in. Andrew Kuchins, who runs the Russia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, replies that insufficient attention has been paid to the impact for U.S. foreign policy in places like the Middle East. Kuchins writes:

While Putin may be conservative and pragmatic by nature, with the United States his emotions are more raw and palpable. We are likely to need Russia's support even more in the future in management of the Afghan drawdown and Iran, and his bargaining is likely to be tougher. And if domestic troubles intensify and he feels more threatened, certainly that will not bode well for ties with Washington. Already we see inclinations for closer ties with Beijing, and, in the context of the Arab Spring, with Iran as well. It is not hard to envision further drift in this direction given certain domestic and/or external developments.

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If Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is forced to drop his bid for re-election for health reasons, will the primary repercussion for the West be the exit of a voluble thorn in the side? Perhaps, but it will also mean the prospect of yet more newly available oil reserves -- on top of the widely projected U.S. shale oil bonanza. The takeaway: If the shale oil projections are accurate, and Chavez leaves politics under whatever scenario, we have the prospect of a geopolitical shakeup analogous to what has accompanied the rise of shale gas.

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves on the planet -- 296 billion barrels, according to OPEC figures. The number is slightly misleading: Saudi Arabia's 264 billion barrels are higher quality and cheaper to produce than the extremely heavy crude of Venezuela's Orinoco Basin; yet Venezuela's reserves are so massive that such details almost don't matter.

The trouble has been that, since Chavez took power 13 years ago, Venezuela's oil production has fallen to 3 million barrels a day, 16 percent less than the 3.5 million barrels a day it produced in the 1990s. This has resulted from Chavez forcing out key members of the skilled labor force and management of the state oil company, known as PDVSA, and his marginalizing of the other source of oil patch expertise -- foreign oil companies such as Chevron and Shell.

Yesterday however, Chavez said his cancer may have recurred, reports the Associated Press -- he must go to Cuba for further treatment and scale back his frenetic pace. That bodes ominous for his attempt to hold back a groundswell of apparent support for Henrique Capriles (pictured above), his 39-year-old opponent in October elections. What distinguishes Venezuela from some other petro-states -- Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Iran among them -- is that power can actually change hands through the ballot box. So even though polls show Chavez with sustained popularity, he still must win. Capriles already was a serious challenger, and now he is more so.

Capriles has already said that, if elected, he will boost oil production. He also has suggested that foreign expertise will be permitted back into the country.

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The New York Times’ Leslie Kaufman and Kate Zernike had some fun over the weekend at the expense of an apparently large number of Americans, including a top presidential contender, who think clean energy is a subversive plot to create a world government led by the United Nations. Many people are merely annoyed by smart meters, bicycle lanes and added home insulation, but these folks say such ideas are seditious.

In 1841, Charles Mackay wrote a gem called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a history of market bubbles based on misperceptions of reality. Call it what you will, but we are in a period of unusually high erroneousness when it comes to energy and the places it’s produced.

Consider the petro-state of Russia. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of people stood outside in minus-10 degree frost in Moscow in order to inform leader Vladimir Putin that he could not simply presume to swap places with President Dmitry Medvedev. What did Putin hear and see? Treacherous protestors acting under orders from Washington.

The Wall Street Journal’s Alan Cullison explains Putin’s assessment as a campaign strategy. Yet the last six years of history suggest that the former KGB officer does actually perceive a White House plot behind the outbreak of popular uprisings of recent years, including the color revolutions of the former Soviet Union and the Arab Spring. (This delusion extends to Washington, where current and former U.S. officials have informed me with serious brows of their decisive role in the color revolutions; these hands still believe that democracy is exported.)

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One becomes nervous when a consensus begins to form around a Big New Idea -- it starts to sound like group think. So what are we to make of the cottage industry developing around the notion that the U.S. not only isn't facing an impending oil shortage -- it is on the cusp of being nearly energy independent, short of a margin of barrels that will be imported from friendly Canada and Mexico?

As discussed over the weekend, Clifford Krauss of the New York Times and oil consultant Daniel Yergin, writing at the Washington Post, have published long pieces marveling at the emerging picture of a hydrocarbon bonanza in the United States and right on its borders. Today, the Financial Times' Ed Crooks adds a third lengthy analysis to this growing train, suggesting that by 2035, the U.S. and Canada together could be producing a whopping 22 million barrels of oil a day -- more than twice the current volume - and thus requiring almost no other crude from anywhere. Add up oil shale from North Dakota (pictured above, North Dakotan oil camp), Texas and elsewhere; Gulf of Mexico crude; natural gas liquids from shale gas; plus Canadian oil sands, and you get the picture. In combination, the analyses leave one with whiplash.

How surprising is this shift? In his Washington Post piece published Sunday, Yergin describes the emergence of a "new world oil map ... centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere." But just six weeks ago, Yergin published The Quest -- his comprehensive, 754-page fresh dive into global energy -- which not only doesn't mention such a shift, but describes a continued Middle East-centered oil universe in which the notion of energy security is a mere "mantra." Yergin already needs to go to an updated second edition.

What could undermine the prognoses is if the result is relatively low oil prices, and a resumption of America's gluttonous gasoline appetite, which would erode millions of barrels of oil a day. Still, Crooks finds solace in the volumes further afield, but still in the Western Hemisphere: "Even if the most optimistic hopes are not fulfilled," he writes, "one can imagine a future in which the U.S. imports oil only from Canada, Mexico and a handful of other friendly countries such as Brazil."

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A much-trumpeted partnership of one of today's most celebrated scientists and the world's largest publicly traded oil company seems stalled in its aim of creating mass-market biofuel from algae, and may require a new agreement to go forward. The disappointment experienced thus far by scientist J. Craig Venter and ExxonMobil is notable not only because of their stature, but that many experts think that, at least in the medium term, algae is the sole realistically commercial source of biofuel that can significantly reduce U.S. and global oil demand.

Venter, the first mapper of the human genome and creator of the first synthetic cell (pictured above), said his scientific team and ExxonMobil have failed to find naturally occurring algae strains that can be converted into a commercial-scale biofuel. ExxonMobil and Venter's La Jolla, Ca.-based Synthetic Genomics Inc., or SGI, continue to attempt to manipulate natural algae, but he said he already sees the answer elsewhere -- in the creation of a man-made strain. "I believe that a fully synthetic cell approach will be the best way to get to a truly disruptive change," Venter told me in an email exchange.

Venter made his remarks before a conference this week on the future of energy at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and in subsequent emailed replies to questions.

Read on to the jump for the rest of the story including Q&A.

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