About
MasterResource is a blog dedicated to analysis and commentary about energy markets and public policy.
Precisely because energy is the lifeblood of the modern economy – the “master resource” that affects the production and use of all other resources – energy markets are often thought of as “different” and thus deserving of special political direction. We believe that the economic rules governing energy are no different from those governing other markets and are thus skeptical about government intervention. Drawing on this perspective, while employing both economic theory and market history, we hope to better inform the energy debate in a civil but forceful manner, without recourse to political partisanship or ideological cant.
Robert L. Bradley, Jr.
Rob Bradley’s interest in energy began when he prepared a study on the oil-reseller boom for a Houston bank in 1980. This investigation into the interplay of business and 1970s oil price and allocation regulation led him to apply for a grant from the Cato Institute to write a history of U.S. oil and natural gas regulation, an anticipated 18-month project that turned into five years of full-time effort. After nearly a decade of trying to find a publisher for the 2,000-page tome, Oil, Gas, and Government: The U.S. Experience was published in two volumes in 1996 by Rowman & Littlefield.
That beginning was followed by 16 years in the energy industry. In 1985, Bradley joined HNG-InterNorth (soon to be renamed Enron) as a Houston-based analyst with Transwestern Pipeline Company, which sold natural gas to the California market. An interstate gas transmission company, Transwestern was regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which provided Bradley with an education into cost-of-service, public-utility regulation.
With natural gas as the swing fuel in California’s electricity generation, Bradley also became conversant with the electricity market and public-utility regulation of gas and electricity on the state level. The California Public Utilities Commission was also active in environmental programs, as was the California Energy Commission.
In 1995, Bradley left Transwestern to become director of public policy analysis at Enron, a corporate staff position. A primary job was preparing speeches for chairman and CEO Ken Lay, but Bradley also was involved in legislative and regulatory issues. It was here that he became very involved in the internal debate over global warming strategy and renewable energy. His criticism of climate alarmism and Enron’s “political capitalism” is evidenced by memos posted on the website, www.politicalcapitalism.org.
Today, Bradley is CEO and founder of the Institute for Energy Research; an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.; and a visiting fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. Bradley is also a senior research fellow of the Center for Energy Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, among other honorary affiliations.
Bradley’s most recent book is Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy (M&M Scrivener Press), which applies the capitalist worldview to corporate and energy controversies. His website www.politicalcapitalism.org covers this work and two forthcoming books in his trilogy on political capitalism in the energy industry.
Bradley’s other books are: The Mirage of Oil Protection (1989); Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability (2000); Climate Alarmism Reconsidered (2003); and (with Richard Fulmer) Energy: The Master Resource (2004).
Kent Hawkins
Kent Hawkins holds electrical engineering degrees from Royal Military College of Canada and Queen’s University.
In his professional career, Mr. Hawkins specialized in communications systems engineering, operations research, and management consulting. The majority of his working life was in the information technology industry with such companies as IBM and EDS.
Since retirement, Kent has devoted a substantial amount of time to the study of electricity generation and distribution policies. His commentary and studies have been published in national magazines and newspapers in Canada, and, most recently, in the quarterly publication of the U. S. Association for Energy Economics, Dialogue.
He lives in Ontario, Canada, and enjoys woodworking, reading, and kayaking.
Donald Hertzmark
Donald Hertzmark is an international energy specialist with more than 25 years of experience in oil and gas economics and analysis. Dr. Hertzmark has worked for a variety of clients in energy and finance in over 90 countries, and has taught economics and energy at universities in Washington, D.C., Colorado, and Thailand.
He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, an attorney, and three cats (to replace the grown children). He is an avid golfer and still competes between trips abroad.
Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger
Mr. Knappenberger holds an M.S. degree in Environmental Sciences (1990) from the University of Virginia as well as a B.A. degree in Environmental Sciences (1986) from the same institution.
His over 20 years of experience as a climate researcher have included 10 years with the Virginia State Climatology Office and 13 years with New Hope Environmental Services, Inc. During his career, he has studied such diverse topics as patterns of global warming, causes of global warming, hurricanes, behavior of U.S. temperature and precipitation change, weather/mortality relationships in the United States, Greenland ice melt, diurnal temperature change, weather and agriculture, circulation changes in the eastern United States, snowfall/temperature relationships in Canada, wintertime coastal storm tracks in the eastern United States, and winter weather forecasting techniques.
From this research, he has authored or co-authored over 20 papers appearing in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and numerous others appearing in scientific conference proceedings, professional journals, and the popular press.
Marlo Lewis
Marlo Lewis is a Senior Fellow in Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), where he writes on global warming, energy policy, and other public policy issues. He has been a public policy analyst for more than 20 years, with stints at two State Department Bureaus (International Organizations, Inter-American Affairs), two congressional subcommittees (International Economics and Trade, House Foreign Affairs; Regulatory Affairs, House Government Reform), and three non-profit groups (Citizens Against Government Waste, Reason Foundation, and CEI).
Lewis’s book-length critique of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth bagged him 1 minute and 15 seconds of fame on the Oprah Winfrey Show, where he provided skeptical commentary on Gore’s 20-feet-of-sea-level-rise doomsday scenario.
Lewis holds a Ph.D. in Government from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he studied the history of political thought, and spent many a happy hour delving into Plato’s divine comedy, The Republic, arguably the most powerful critique of utopian planning ever written.
A passionate music lover, Marlo plays bluegrass and folk music on guitar and mandolin, regularly performing with The Pluckers and Off the Record at local D.C. watering holes.
Michael C. Lynch
Michael C. Lynch is President of Strategic Energy and Economic Research. He has combined S.B.-S.M. degrees in Political Science from M.I.T., and has performed a variety of studies related to international energy matters, including forecasting of the world oil market, energy and security and corporate strategy in the energy industries, as well as analysis of oil and gas supply.
Lynch is best known for his work in two areas: analyzing the forecasting of oil and gas markets, and studying the economics of petroleum supply. As part of that, he has demonstrated the source of the errors in the 1970s oil forecasts and the shortcomings in oil supply models. Most recently, he has been noted for his analysis of peak oil ‘modeling’ which demonstrated that it is based on flawed methods and is essentially unscientific.
Lynch is a former Chief Energy Economist at DRI-WEFA, Inc. a leading economic consulting firm, and a past-President of the United States Association for Energy Economics. He was a Senior Fellow for the USAEE. His publications have appeared in seven languages, as well as English, and he serves on several editorial boards, including for the journal Energy Policy and Geopolitics of Energy.
Robert P. Murphy
Robert P. Murphy is an economist with IER specializing in climate change. His research focuses on the proper discount rate to be used in cost-benefit analyses and the implications of structural uncertainty for policy solutions.
Murphy received his Ph.D. in economics from New York University in 2003, where he wrote his dissertation on capital and interest theory. After teaching at Hillsdale College for three years, he moved to the financial sector to work as an analyst for Arthur Laffer (of Laffer Curve fame). In addition to his role at IER, Murphy is a financial consultant, providing forecasts on interest and exchange rates, growth, and inflation.
Murphy has written over 100 articles for the layman on free-market economics and is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism (Regnery 2007). He has also given numerous radio interviews and public lectures on economic topics.
Besides employing these popular outlets, Murphy has written study guides for the economic treatises of Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises, and designed a Home Study Course in Austrian School economics. He has also published several scholarly articles and notes in peer-reviewed journals, including The Journal of the History of Economic Thought, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, and The Review of Austrian Economics.
Robert Peltier
Robert Peltier began his career with San Diego Gas & Electric Co. in late 1974 as a project engineer responsible for several combustion turbine projects, and with Energy Factors (now Sithe Global Power) where Peltier was Project Manager for a number of combustion turbine combined cycle and reciprocating engine cogeneration projects plus a wood-burning steam plant. Peltier also spent several years as manager of production engineering for Stewart & Stevenson Services, where he was responsible for combustion turbine package design and balance-of-plant engineering for turnkey projects world-wide.
Peltier made a career change in 1987 when he became a faculty member in the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences at Arizona State University where he taught power-related courses. Although considered “too practical” by many faculty, Peltier was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor a year early. Bob also served as director of the university’s Energy Management Laboratory for five years and was named as the college’s outstanding upper division instructor twice in three years.
Captain Peltier was recalled to active duty in the U.S. Navy to serve as a Technical Manager on the staff of the Commander, Naval Sea Systems Command in late 1999. On the morning of September 12, 2001, Peltier was assigned as the Navy’s senior Casualty Officer for the families of Navy personnel killed in the Pentagon attack until his release from active duty a year later. Peltier next served as Commanding Officer of two Office of Naval Research reserve units focused on the application of advanced technology in the War on Terror. Peltier retired from the Navy in 2007 after a career spanning 27 years of active and reserve service.
Peltier joined the POWER magazine’s editorial staff as senior editor after leaving active duty in 2002 and was named Editor-in-Chief of POWER on April 1, 2003. Peltier has authored hundreds of articles on power plant technology over the years and is a co-author of The Sourcebook for Competitive Powerplant Management. Bob has a BS, MS and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and is a registered engineer in California and Arizona.
Jerry Taylor
As a senior fellow, Jerry Taylor challenges the “market failure” critique of free markets as they pertain to energy policy and environmental protection. Under his direction, the Cato Institute has become an influential critic of federal and state environmental policy.
Taylor is active on the lecture circuit and one of the most frequently cited experts in energy and environmental policy in the nation. He has served on numerous congressional advisory bodies and has testified over a dozen times at hearings on Capitol Hill.
Taylor is the author of numerous studies and journal essays on energy and environmental issues, and has contributed to several anthologies, including Market Liberalism: A New Paradigm for the 21st Century, The Cato Handbook for Congress, and China as a Global Economic Power: Market Reforms and the New Millennium, and Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet.
He is a frequent contributor to prominent newspapers and magazines, and has written for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Additionally, Taylor is a regular commentator on Fox News Channel, CNBC, CNN, NPR, and the BBC.
Roger Donway (copy editor)
Roger Donway is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Energy Research (IER). Donway’s previous endeavors include a position as assistant editor at the Middle East Forum, managing editor of Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs, and editor of Navigator: An Objectivist Review of Politics and Culture. The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Walter McDougall, after working closely with him for four years, said of Donway, “An editor of his experience, loyalty, high standards, and erudition is almost impossible to find nowadays.”
Donway has published more than one hundred articles in philosophy, politics, economics, and the arts and is co-author of Laissez-Parler: Freedom in the Electronic Media (Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University). He has also written a book-length manuscript, The Steelmasters, a history of steel technology told through the biographies of the men who created it.
Most recently, Donway has been editing and performing research for Robert Bradley’s forthcoming trilogy on political capitalism, the first volume of which was published in 2009 by M & M Scrivener Press.
Donway received a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Brown University where he also pursued graduate studies.
