The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES) is one of the world's most respected institutions in applied energy economics. Its researchers have produced decades of authoritative work on oil and gas markets, LNG pricing and the geopolitics of energy supply. For oil and gas industry analysts, the OIES offers keen insights.
Which makes it all the more telling — and dispiriting — that OIES has chosen to hitch its wagon so firmly to the 'energy transition' bandwagon. The institute's recent special edition of the Oxford Energy Forum on the Hormuz Crisis, published in late May 2026 and posted on LinkedIn on Tuesday, illustrates this contradiction. Here is an institute that simultaneously commands respect for its empirical rigour on fossil fuel markets and yet, when it comes to the 'energy transition', reliably produces analysis shaped by the prevailing academic and institutional orthodoxy rather than by hard-nosed economic analysis.
This is of course no surprise. Oxford University boasts the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment which is explicitly committed to “the green transition to achieve Net Zero emissions and sustainable development". The school’s 'experts' recently came out with a report that found it a “sheer fantasy” that utilising the remaining North Sea reserves of oil and gas would make UK energy more secure or that it would make valuable contribution to the economy and its households. It also claimed that renewables have become cheaper than natural gas-fired generation.
The contrast with what an independent Oxford mind can do when liberated from
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The other point about Oxford is that they assume (economists, eh?) that things are static. But people adapt, and Hormuz will never be trusted again. Pipelines will be doubled, even crossing Israel. IRGC defanged. H/T Robin Brooks –
And this: half of Russian sanctioned oil still goes through the Baltic. Name and shame.
https://open.substack.com/pub/robinjbrooks/p/europe-needs-to-blockade-russia-in?r=jt1jb&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
Who pays them? It would be useful to know. Perhaps Dr Doshi and Charlotte Gill could put their heads together.
Respected institutions like OIES do their best work when they apply rigorous economic analysis to energy markets without fear of where it leads.
Or just report on reality and the truth
The Climate Change madness isn’t a grass roots movement, it’s top down, and it’s driven by stream of junk science. The scientists who provide that junk are almost entirely dependent on grants. Upset the people who provide those grants and you’re out. Any ambitious graduate will play the game.
The academics at the top of our institutions who dish out those grants are part of a lucrative revolving door system of job swapping between academic organisations, major corporations, regulators, and philanthropic charities. It’s the people who control that revolving door who have the real power. That’s how philanthropist entrepreneurs direct both “the science” and the mainstream news organisations that shamelessly promote it.
Paying off the CEOs of our academic institutions with grants and job offers is just loose change for people like the Rockefellers, Gates etc.