Acceso usuarios
Energy is becoming more and more important to state survival and economic development, and is increasingly considered an issue of �national security�. In 2005, the bid by China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) for US energy company Unocal was securitised by US elite actors, who called for presidential action on the grounds of �national security�. This article argues that securitisation of energy is problematic, as it impedes cooperation and encourages strategic and/or economic competition between states over energy supplies by tying energy to a national security �us vs. them� scenario. Moreover, it limits the energy security debate. The article will use a securitisation approach to analyse the discourse of the Unocal affair, together with a smaller complementary case study of US�China cooperation on shale gas to show the possibility of dealing with energy in desecuritised terms. It argues that the current literature on energy �security� analyses policy in overly simplistic competition/cooperation terms and fails to recognise the policy implications of securitising energy. In contrast, a securitisation approach to energy can explain the (re)presentation of energy as a policy issue and allows an analysis of how using particular discourse makes particular policy possible, while silencing alternative policy options. This has implications for policy-making in this area as energy policy/practice should be desecuritised.
