Article History KeywordsCrude oil prices Trade balance Balkan Energy security Natural gas. F1, F4, Q3, Q4. This chapter examines the impact of low oil prices in the last years on the trade balance of Balkan countries and their energy security. The development of oil prices in the last years has a potential impact on all economies. Indeed the impact was positive for crude oil importing economies but in the other hand, negative impact on crude oil exporting economies. According to our analysis, the impact was positive on all Balkan economies, regardless the scale of the impact. The positive impact was clear on the trade balance of all Balkan countries, for example in 2015 they registered a significant decrease in their deficit of trade balance comparing to 2011. For the energy security of Balkan should be insured by other alternative energy resources, among them natural gas and renewable energy resources. JEL ClassificationContribution/ Originality: This paper is a contribution to the literature of energy economics for researchers and business companies operated in the energy sector. It is an analysis of oil prices and their impact on trade balance of Balkan region and explores the energy security position of that region in the last years.

This paper examines the energy security of a selected group of EU countries. The study covers period 2006-2017 and is done for selected group of countries -Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Netherladns, United Kingdom and Slovakia. The primary used methodology is the Z-score standardization. In order to obtain an index of greater complexity, we extended this methodology by incorporating Herfindahl-Hirschmann index values for natural gas imports. Our findings suggest, that, among the largest energy consuming countries in the EU, Italy came as the country with the highest level of energy security index (ESI) as it benefitted from improved security of supply. France ESI slightly decreased due to worsening indicator of economic availability. Poland and Slovakia both suffered from low advancements in the are of environmental acceptability. The complexity of the solved problem caueses undesired consequences, as development of ESI index deteriorated after German nulear phase-out. The paper clearly ducuments there there is not a single way how to approach enhancing a country's energy security.

This paper examines the issue of production of unconventional resources of energy and their impact on energy security. Energy security is influenced by several factors, among them the endowment of natural energy resources, either conventional or unconventional, and the level of their production. A VAR model has been constructed to examine the influence of tight oil production on the price of oil and on other variables, moreover, which variables influence the price of oil most. These findings may be interpreted by generalization as influencing the energy security and by extrapolation the results hold same for the American market than for the rest of the world, as the US largely dictates the price of oil worldwide. Our results inter alia suggest that, unconventional oil Granger causes the price of WTI, and the opposite in not true. We found also that there is a slightly positive correlation between the stocks and tight oil and stocks and oil exports, hence we can conclude that a higher production leads to higher amount of oil stocked and exported. What is more interesting is that tight oil reports greater correlation than conventional oil production.

This paper explores competitive advantage of Yemeni export in the market of the USA. Yemen has been placed under a special situation since the "Arab Spring" in 2011; therefore, our analyses study the eleven years prior to the war, between 2000 and 2011, and employ 2-digit SITCs to identify the various products for the selected study period. Balassa's index has been utilized to measure revealed competitive advantage (RCA). This approach is universally popular and is widely reported in literature; however, we are cognizant to the fact that this index may not be empirically relevant. Despite this drawback, Balassa's index has a feature for gross sectoral competiveness of the examined country or a group of countries. According to our empirical analyses using Balassa's index, we identified Yemen to have competitive advantages at the global level during international trade in the selected study period. The competitive advantage was restricted to a few groups of energy and non-energy commodities.