Geopolitics of Energy

Abstract

Geopolitics of Energy can be defined as ‘the effect that location of resources has on the politics of states’. The key activator of that effect is dependency, which applies both to producers (revenue) and consumers (energy needs). Historically it has been the threat to supply rather than to price which has caused most concern to the consumers, and this culminated in the Gulf war reaction to Iraq's seizure of Kuwait in 1990. In future the Middle East and OECD as a focus of energy geopolitics will be supplemented, it not replaced, by Russia, Central Asia, China, India and the Far East as those areas increasingly influence both the supply and demand balance for both oil and gas.