An exceptionally lucid article on oil, gas and global politics
Tom KirkmanIndependent Project Manager
Exceptionally lucid article about international oil & gas + global politics.
2 thumbs up.
Long read, well worth the time.
Doesn’t matter whether you agree or not, many points raised are worth considering, if only for rational debate.
I certainly do not agree with everything in this article, but it is always good to consider well-presented viewpoints different than one’s own, and perhaps reconsider and recalibrate one’s own views based on intelligent, alternate thinking.
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“China and Russia have a great deal in common.
Both are authoritarian states, both lost territory in the twentieth century, and both are set on redressing those losses.
Both are critical players in the world’s energy markets, howbeit for very different reasons, and both see the US as “the enemy”.
Both are nuclear powers, and both have heavy military expenditure.
The similarities can of course be pushed too far: China is a rising power based upon a rising economy; Russia is much smaller in almost every respect.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia has become dependent on China, and in many ways has become something of a vassal state.
… With uncanny similarity to the Germans pursuing Nord Stream 1 and then 2, deliberately (in Putin’s case) aiding Russia’s isolation of Ukrainian gas pipelines in the process, the EU and the US are merrily increasing their dependency on China for the critical minerals for the net zero transition, and increasing dependency on Chinese solar panels and wind turbines and much else.
The control by Russia of gas into Europe hit very hard; a parallel dependency is building for the energy of the future. Every day that dependency grows.
… After the shock of the great European gas crisis, you might think that lessons had been learned, the security of supply playbook would now be ready to roll out more generally, and, having been caught asleep at the geo-political wheel over Ukraine, there would be no mistake second time around.
… The depressive history of the gas price crisis is that it has followed the usual pattern: denial, panic, relief and then complacency.
… The remarkable thing about the gas crisis is that almost nothing has been learned, except for the political leaders to double down on what they are already doing.
Ludicrous conclusions are drawn – that we should all try to get out of the future threat of high and volatile gas prices, just to make sure that we do not benefit from low and stable gas prices that are very likely to follow.
It is the sort of mistake made in previous crises.
In the great oil shocks of the 1970s and especially in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution, there was a great attempt to “get out of oil”, and hence to reduce the benefits of the two decades of rock-bottom prices that followed. …”