  I present an analysis of the gamma-ray and afterglow energies of the complete
sample of 17 short duration GRBs with prompt X-ray follow-up. I find that 80%
of the bursts exhibit a linear correlation between their gamma-ray fluence and
the afterglow X-ray flux normalized to t=1 d, a proxy for the kinetic energy of
the blast wave ($F_{X,1}~F_{gamma}^1.01). An even tighter correlation is
evident between E_{gamma,iso} and L_{X,1} for the subset of 13 bursts with
measured or constrained redshifts. The remaining 20% of the bursts have values
of F_{X,1}/F_{gamma} that are suppressed by about three orders of magnitude,
likely because of low circumburst densities (Nakar 2007). These results have
several important implications: (i) The X-ray luminosity is generally a robust
proxy for the blast wave kinetic energy, indicating nu_X>nu_c and hence a
circumburst density n>0.05 cm^{-3}; (ii) most short GRBs have a narrow range of
gamma-ray efficiency, with <epsilon_{gamma}>~0.85 and a spread of 0.14 dex; and
(iii) the isotropic-equivalent energies span 10^{48}-10^{52} erg. Furthermore,
I find tentative evidence for jet collimation in the two bursts with the
highest E_{gamma,iso}, perhaps indicative of the same inverse correlation that
leads to a narrow distribution of true energies in long GRBs. I find no clear
evidence for a relation between the overall energy release and host galaxy
type, but a positive correlation with duration may be present, albeit with a
large scatter. Finally, I note that the outlier fraction of 20% is similar to
the proposed fraction of short GRBs from dynamically-formed neutron star
binaries in globular clusters. This scenario may naturally explain the
bimodality of the F_{X,1}/F_{gamma} distribution and the low circumburst
densities without invoking speculative kick velocities of several hundred km/s.
