The resonance effect from the North American energy boom, thanks to which an importer will soon become an exporter, has reached the Middle East, the Russian Federation and China. This trend has led not only to the emergence of new energy sources, but also to increased competitiveness, geopolitical plane shifts and to the creation of new interstate relations.
To such conclusions came the analysts of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL), who published the annual report on the development of the global oil and gas market. In this document, experts focused on such directions as competition among fuel suppliers, globalization of energy markets, changing the role of various fuels in the global energy and opening and closing borders depending on changes in the geopolitical situation.
The leading specialist of the company Adi Karev noted that this year the energy markets were influenced by pragmatic sentiments and geopolitical motivations like never before. At the same time, the development of US energy will not be felt in Eurasia in connection with the restoration of the influence of Russia and growing China.
Conclusions on some directions sound as follows:
According to forecasts, by the end of this decade, the US will become a net exporter of natural gas. At the same time, there are a number of fears that an increasing sense of self-sufficiency will lead the country's government to the policy of isolationism and self-elimination from world politics. If this scenario becomes a reality, the world will have to look for new sources of meeting the rising demand for fuel in the Pacific region of Asia. At the same time, there will be a shift towards an increase in the share of clean fuel sources and liquefied gas.
The supply of energy sources - new sources, new geopolitics
As known, in the last half of the century the OPEC countries and Russian Federation were the leaders of the oil and gas industry. Today, other suppliers are trying to challenge the dominance and in the process of this struggle are changing the geopolitical landscape. "In the next decade, new energy suppliers will change the global hydrocarbon market. The production growth in Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Kazakhstan will change the market. We will see the declining roles of OPEC and Russian Federation, which will force them to act more aggressively to maintain their market share", said Karev.
Consumption of energy is shifting more and more towards environmentally friendly sources of fuel, such as a natural gas. In North America, it is mainly used in transportation, industrial production and energy generation. Japan is also going to increase the role of this type of fuel due to the incident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Europe has embarked on the path of increasing coal consumption, despite its efforts in the development of alternative energy.
New oil and gas projects, capable of providing energy equivalent to a billion barrels of oil, can be grouped into three groups: traditional, innovative and non-traditional (development of bituminous sands, bituminous shales, thermal depolymerization and extraction of hard-to-extract oil). At the same time, such projects as deepwater and Arctic drilling and production of liquefied gas are now classified as traditional projects.
