Speaker

John M. Roberts is an energy security specialist with Methinks, focusing on the inter-relationship between energy, economic development, and politics. He is a member of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Group of Experts on Gas. He is a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute of Energy for South-East Europe (IENE) in Athens and a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Centre in Washington, DC.
Roberts is one of Europe’s leading energy security specialists and has testified to UK parliamentary committees on Mideast, Russian, Caspian, Turkish and Kurdish energy security issues. He has a particular expertise in the development of energy in Central Asia and the Caucasus and in the pipelines designed to connect the Caspian to Europe, Russia, China and India.
His recent publications include: Azerbaijan’s energy transition in light of COP 29 (with Julian Bowden); Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, October 2024. US LNG: A Stress Test for US-Europe Relations; International Tax and Investment Center, Washington DC. July 2024.
Caspian contributions to energy security in Europe (with Julian Bowden); Atlantic Council July 2024. Why the EU needs US liquefied natural gas (with Ariel Cohen); Atlantic Council. Washington DC, July 2024. Hydrocarbon Resources in the Eastern Mediterranean: An Energy Perspective, Südosteuropa Mitteilungen, Munchen, Germany, February 2021.
He is also the author of a series of UNECE papers, published in 2020, on the role of gas in the energy transition.
His view on the current energy crisis is this. We face a paradox: we have never needed fossil fuels so much;we have never needed to get out of fossil fuels so much.