This study is, to the best of our knowledge, the first attempt to examine the factors contributing to energy insecurity for a global sample of 139 countries during 1996–2016. Besides the full sample, Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) models are deployed for subsamples of countries at different income levels for comparison and completeness. Five different proxies of energy insecurity are considered to thoroughly examine different aspects of energy security. The study finds that for the full global sample, higher income and governance quality reduce the level of overall energy insecurity. Specifically, economic growth improves the ratio of energy production to consumption although energy use per capita seems to rise. In addition, economic development promotes energy efficiency and reduces emissions. Similarly, governance quality appears to improve the efficiency of energy usage. On the other hand, trade openness has a negative effect on all indicators of energy insecurity while FDI has negligible effects. The empirical results vary for the three subsamples of countries.