Energy security

Interview Sir John Scarlett, Advisor Statoil, Ex-Head MI6: “The Role of Old-Fashioned Geopolitics Will Become Less Important in Energy”

Thanks to new energy policies, technologies and market trends the potential to use energy for political purposes has decreased in recent years, says Sir John Scarlett, former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service MI6 and now Chairman of the Strategy Advisory Council at Statoil, in an interview with Energy Post. At the same time he notes that instability in North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe has grown and energy security should remain central to nations’ overall security and military policies.

Sir John Scarlett, a former “Spy Chief” who left MI6 in 2009, is one of the speakers at a Summit on Energy Security organised by the Munich Security Conference and the ONS Foundation in Stavanger on 28-29 August. With his background in geopolitics – he was, among other things, a “Station Chief” in Moscow in the 1990s – he still follows events around Russia and in the Middle East closely. “It’s hard to be optimistic about current developments, especially in regard to Syria”, he says. “As an authoritative colleague said recently – he has never seen a more complicated problem”.