Columbia Energy Exchange

Iris Ferguson, president of IAF Strategies and former Pentagon Arctic policy official, brings firsthand Arctic experience and policy chops. She discusses Greenland’s resource potential, mining and energy tradeoffs, strategic military infrastructure like Pituffik, and how climate change and great-power competition reshape Arctic access and risks.

Bob McNally, founder of Rapidan Energy Group and former White House energy advisor, shares his White House crisis experience. He and Jason Bordoff discuss managing sudden oil shocks, limits of policy tools like the SPR, coordinating allies, and balancing short-term security with long-term transitions. They reflect on analytic rigor, political constraints, and preparation for major supply disruptions.

Yasser El-Gindi, partner and oil-market strategist with 25+ years advising institutional investors, breaks down the UAE's dramatic exit from OPEC. He explores why the timing minimized disruption. He contrasts stressed physical markets with softer futures, warns about jet fuel and inventory strains, and outlines how a post-Hormuz world could reshape global energy security.

Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy and Columbia professor of energy policy, geopolitics, and climate. He dissects the unprecedented 13–15 million bpd Iran supply shock. He explores how long flows might stay disrupted, trade-offs between energy autarky and interconnection, and what this means for electrification, resilience, and clean‑energy supply chains.

Ian Bremmer, founder of Eurasia Group and Columbia SIPA faculty member, offers a compact tour of today’s fractured world. He discusses the Iran crisis and potential ceasefire contours. He explores Gulf rivalries and shifting trade routes. He examines AI’s real organizational effects and whether sovereign AI stacks make sense. He assesses China’s long game and how geopolitical fragmentation reshapes markets and energy flows.

Amos Hochstein, a former senior energy advisor to President Biden and expert in energy geopolitics, weighs in on the Strait of Hormuz situation. He unpacks the morning’s confusing ceasefire claims, market swings, and what “opening” the strait would mean. Short-term tanker volumes, long-term Iranian leverage, and regional infrastructure and policy responses are all debated in crisp, strategic terms.

Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.media and veteran analyst of Persian Gulf power dynamics, breaks down Tehran’s wartime decision-making and internal power struggles. He outlines Iran’s Hormuz strategy and economic leverage. He explores whether the IRGC can shift away from regional militias and how negotiators might buy time for technical nuclear compromises.

Rajiv Shah, president of The Rockefeller Foundation and former USAID administrator, explains why universal, productive energy access matters for growth and opportunity. He discusses the new high-level panel, financing challenges and transfer solutions, technology choices from distributed renewables to gas, and how pragmatic, analytic policy can reconcile access, reliability, and climate goals.

Dan Steingart, chemical engineer and battery researcher at Columbia, discusses the trajectory of energy storage innovation. He walks through lithium-ion’s remaining runway and the practical rise of LFP. He weighs sodium-ion, solid-state promises, mineral supply and processing risks, U.S. manufacturing gaps, and the growing role of batteries in grid resilience and virtual power plants.

Ali Ansari, professor of Iranian history and founder of the Institute for Iranian Studies, offers on-the-ground perspective. He discusses fractured decision-making after Khamenei's death and the IRGC's rise as military and corporate power. Conversation covers the IRGC's decentralized 'mosaic defense', risks of infrastructure strikes, and Iran's short-term leverage over the Strait of Hormuz.