Jim Krane, Ph.D.

Jim Krane, Ph.D., is the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow for Energy Studies and co-director of the Middle East Energy Roundtable (MEER) initiative at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. He specializes in energy geopolitics, with a focus on oil-exporting countries and the challenges they face from energy subsidies, internal demand and climate change. He teaches classes on energy policy and geopolitics at Rice University.

Krane’s scholarly articles have been published in Nature Energy, Energy Policy, Energy Journal, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, MRS Energy and Sustainability, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as well as numerous edited volumes. He is also the author of two books. His acclaimed 2009 volume, City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism, is widely recognized as the seminal work on the iconoclastic city-state, while his award-winning 2019 book, Energy Kingdoms: Oil and Political Survival in the Persian Gulf, is the definitive study of energy demand in the Gulf region.

Krane spent nearly 20 years as a journalist, six of them in the Middle East. He was a longtime correspondent for the Associated Press based in Dubai, Baghdad and New York, and has written for myriad other publications including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and the Economist Intelligence Unit. He is the winner of several journalism awards including the 2003 AP Managing Editors Deadline Reporting Award, received for his coverage of Saddam Hussein’s capture in Iraq. Krane received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, master’s from Columbia University and bachelor’s from City College of New York.