Abstract
The October 1973 OPEC oil embargo gave rise to the idea of energy security, focused on guaran-teeing economic fuel supply. It gradually incorporated environmental, governance, and equity issues, thus increasing the complexity of the concept, policies, and measurement methods. This essay uses a political economy approach to scrutinize these developments and select the vari-ables needed to construct three energy security indices that are both related to each other and independent: oil security, energy diversity, and energy transition. It applies all three for the years from 1980 to 2016 to Canada, the United States, and Mexico, countries with historic social and economic ties that include energy. The results point out the centrality of oil in energy security and the benefits of constructing independent indices for each country and context examined.
