“Forward, Backward, Sideways: Global Energy Redux” Keynote Address
AIChE Spring Annual Meeting
Orlando, Florida
April 24, 2006
Dr. Michelle Michot Foss
Chief Energy Economist and Head
Center for Energy Economics
Bureau of Economic Geology
The University of Texas at Austin (in Houston)
High energy prices, strong growth, low inflation – who woulda thunk it? These and other conundrums will be explored within the context of a revived interest worldwide in the role energy plays in our economies, geopolitical relationships, and perceptions about environment quality. Dr. Michot Foss will lay out fundamentals driving global and regional energy supply and demand, discuss emerging trends in key fuels and energy commodity markets, and highlight critical policy and regulatory controversies and directions.
The CEE is a multidisciplinary business and public policy program on energy and associated environmental issues, formerly the Institute for Energy, Law & Enterprise at the University of Houston Law Center (UH IELE). The CEE is a center for excellence on commercial frameworks for energy development across the energy value chains.
At CEE, Dr. Michot Foss directs and conducts research; advises U.S. and international energy companies; publishes and speaks widely on energy issues; and provides public commentary and testimony to governments (most recently on ultra deep oil and gas, U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Energy, April 29, 2004). She developed and directs New Era in Oil, Gas & Power Value Creation, an international capacity building program, is the principle investigator for the CEE’s LNG consortium, Commercial Frameworks for LNG in North America, principle investigator on a number of federal agency grants and cooperative agreements.
In addition to Texas and the U.S., the CEE has experience in Canada and Mexico; South America; Russia and the Caspian; Western Europe and Turkey; West Africa; and East Asia. While at UH from 1991-2005, Dr. Michot Foss was a UH Shell Interdisciplinary Scholar and Shell Graduate Fellow, coordinator of the Natural Gas Project and founder and director of the Energy Institute (both merged into the UH IELE).
She was previously a director of research at Simmons & Company, an investment bank specializing in oil field services, and director of research at Rice Center, an urban regional economics, energy, and transportation research group. She was selected one of the Key Women in Energy-Americas (2003). She was the 2003 president of the International Association for Energy Economics; is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; is a member of Women’s Energy Network; and is a partner in Harvest Gas Management, a Texas-based exploration company.
She is a member of the Scientific Council, 50th Anniversary of ENI, Commemorative Encyclopedia of Hydrocarbons; serves on the advisory board of Energy Magazine and the Energy & Environment Law & Policy Journal, University of Houston Law Center; and the editorial board of the International Journal of Regulation and Governance. She holds degrees from University of Louisiana-Lafayette (B.S., biology with geology minor); Colorado School of Mines (M.S., economics), where she coordinated the Energy & Minerals Field Institute; and University of Houston (Ph.D., political science).