GUST Hosts Leading Expert to Discuss Declining Oil Prices and its Regional ImplicationsBin

• Lecture by Dr. Bassam Fattouh, Professor at SOAS and Director of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

• Lecture aims to educate attendees on the regional implications of declining oil prices.

• The Global Studies Center at GUST regularly holds sessions with renowned speakers on a variety of different, culturally relevant topics.

• Dr. Fattouh discusses OPEC and its position of uncertainty.

Kuwait City – 26 March 2016: Gulf University for Science and Technology’s (GUST) Global Studies Center (GSC) organized a lecture on campus last week, entitled “Declining Oil Prices and Regional Implications”. The lecture, which was delivered by Dr. Bassam Fattouh, Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, UK, provided insights to GUST students, staff, faculty, and the public about this pertinent issue.

Director of the Global Studies Center, Dr. Martin Rosenstock, said, “The GSC organizes talks by local and international experts on crucial and timely issues, and there are few matters of more importance for Kuwait today than the developments in the international oil market”.

Dr. Bassam Fattouh examined the latest developments in the oil market and their implications by placing them within a broader historical context. He then discussed the role of OPEC and its current position of uncertainty, as well as the potential resilience of GCC economies to weather the low-price environment in both the short and long-term. Time was allotted at the end of the lecture for a Q&A session to open a dialogue and share information.

Dr. Fattouh is one of the leading experts on the international oil market, and the social and political implications of fluctuations in the price of oil. He has published widely on oil, energy, and security in the Middle East including a variety of articles on the international oil pricing system, OPEC pricing power, security of Middle Eastern oil supplies, and the dynamics of oil prices and differentials which have appeared in notable publications such as Energy Economics, The Energy Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, among others.

The GSC regularly holds sessions with renowned speakers on a variety of different, culturally relevant topics, including recent talks by Dr. Daniel Brumberg of Sciences Po on “US-Arab Relations in a Time of Crisis”, and another by Professor Toby Dodge, Director of the Kuwait Program at the London School of Economics on the “Rise of the Islamic State, the Future of Iraq, and Risks to the Gulf States”.