The COVID-19 pandemic storm has struck the world economies and energy markets with extreme strength. The goal of our study is to assess how the pandemic has influenced oil and gas prices, using energy market reactions in the United States and Japan. To investigate the impact of the COVID-19 cases on the crude oil and natural gas markets, we applied the Auto-Regressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) approach to the number of the US and Japanese COVID-19 cases and energy prices. Our study period is from 21 January 2020 to 2 June 2020, and uses the latest data available at the time of model calibration and captures the so-called “first pandemic wave”. In the US, the COVID-19 pandemic had a statistically negative impact on the crude oil price while it positively affected the gas price. In Japan, this negative impact was only apparent in the crude oil market with a two-day lag. Possible explanations of the results may include differences in pandemic development in the US and Japan, and the diverse roles both countries have in energy markets.

Energy security is one of the most intensely debated topics. Majority of papers treat the issue from the hydrocarbon market perspective, but this research focuses on the coal market broken into two specific market segments: heating and electricity production. Using the case of Poland as an example, we conduct a cointegration analysis between the coal and natural gas markets. The study uses monthly data from 2011 until the beginning of 2019. Our results show that the Polish electricity sector is more connected to the international coal market than it is to the natural gas market, while the heating sector, despite using insignificant quantities of imported coal, is more connected to the natural gas market. Hence, energy security—in its price dimension—in those two market segments differs. This situation has important policy implications. First, energy policy should take this difference into account, and second, such variation implies that different market tools should be used in those market segments.

International competitiveness and energy security are important topics on the energy policy agenda of energy-exporting and -importing nations. High dependence on energy rents challenges exporters’ economies and influences their ability to compete on international markets. The goal of this study is to investigate how energy demand security affects the international competitiveness of developed energy exporters. This research employs an econometric approach aimed at modeling the Heckscher–Ohlin and Ricardo international trade hypotheses. Introduced modifications allow for the measurement of international competitiveness on a country level, not per industry, and includes a series of energy variables in addition to relative resource endowment and productivity differentials. This study (based on Norway, the Netherlands, Canada and the USA over the period of 1997–2017) proves that energy security does not play a role in the shaping of international competitiveness of high-income energy-exporting countries.

Objective: The objective of this paper is to investigate the link between energy security and international competitiveness captured by export. Research Design & Methods: To fulfil the goal, we employed the panel data linear regression model with fixed effects. The study includes 23 countries denoted by one of the world’s biggest energy consumption levels between 1995 and 2014. Findings: The study confirms the existence of the relationship between energy security and export in the defined and examined groups of goods. Energy security influences exports of capital goods most. While the environmental and economic aspects of energy security gain importance in all tested categories of goods, energy imports lose it. Implications & Recommendations: The research results suggest that the energy security concept is not a coherent phenomenon as the environmental aspect had the greatest influence on international competitiveness. Such a result calls for a broader empirical investigation with a greater sample size divided upon GDP performance. Contribution & Value Added: The originality of this work lies in studying the link between energy security and international competitiveness from the export perspective. The identified research gap in this area shows a relative lack of theoretical and empirical studies.

Energy security is one of the most frequently analysed phenomena in the energy markets. Great variety of scientifc efforts should have indicated clear definition of the phenomenon. However, those studies highlighted more than 80 different definitions of what energy security really is. Due to the...