The summer of 2015 has been a terrible climate moment and an energy game changer in the Middle East. From the end of July to the middle of August, a terrible heat wave has swept the whole region, from Iran and the Persian Gulf to Egypt, causing hundreds of deaths and a heavy pressure on the health of people, the infrastructures and social cohesion (Kyle Jaeger, “”Heat Dome” in the Middle East is ravaging region’s residents”, ATTN, August 4th, 2015). At the end of this sequence, at the beginning of September, the Italian oil giant corporation ENI announced having found a mammoth off shore deposit of natural gas in the Egyptian economic exclusive zone (Jeff Reed, “ Elephant discovery made …
Author Archives: Dr Jean-Michel Valantin (PhD Paris)
China and the New Silk Road: From Oil Wells to the Moon… and Beyond
On 25 May 2015, the Chinese political authorities agreed to finance the building of a pipeline between Pakistan and Iran, dubbed the “peace pipe line” (Valantin, “China, and the new silk road: the Pakistani strategy”, The Red Team Analysis Society, May 18, 2015). As we saw, this agreement is part of the Chinese strategy called “the New Silk Road”, which is defined by the concept of “One belt, One road”. The “road” is aimed at creating a worldwide “land and sea” system (“Belt and Road Nations account for 26 per cent of China’s trade”, The Beijing Review, April 29, 2015), in order to attract supplies and diverse resources much-needed by the rapidly growing Chinese economy and urban development. Each “segment” of …
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China, Israel, and the New Silk Road
In April 2014, the Israeli President and historic figure Shimon Peres led a three days state visit in China, in order to bolster the growing relationship between the two countries (Shannon Tiezzi, “As China Turns Toward Middle East, China and Israel Seek Closer Ties“, The Diplomat, April 09, 2014). It is interesting to note that the discussions were mainly focused on agriculture, natural resources, environmental protection, education and healthcare. Since then, other talks have been held about defense cooperation (Mercy A. Kuo and Angelica O. Tang, “The U.S.-China-Israel Defense Dynamic: Strategic Common Ground”, The Diplomat, May 11, 2015). Beijing has even proposed its mediation in the Israel-Palestine conflict (Shannon Tiezzi, “China appoints new special envoy to the Middle east”, The Diplomat, September …
China and the New Silk Road: The Pakistani Strategy
On 20 April 2015, the Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced a common plan for developing an economic and energy corridor linking the two countries through the development of gigantic infrastructures worth 46 billion dollars (Katharine Houreld, “China and Pakistan launch economic corridor plan worth 46 billion dollars”, Reuters, April 20, 2015). If this announcement is in itself very impressive, it is, in fact, only a part of China’s grand strategy, dubbed the “New Silk Road”. This strategy is defined through the concepts of “belt and road” (literally in Chinese Yídài yílù, 一带一路, one belt, one road) (“Belt and Road Nations account for 26 per cent of China’s trade”, The Beijing Review, April 29, 2015). …
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Israel, Natural Gas and Power in the Middle East
Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime minister is known to joke about the fact that Moses led his people during forty years in the desert to the only place in the Middle East without oil (Marin Katusa, The Colder War, 2014). And, indeed, for the first sixty years of its existence, the lack of energy resources has been a major difficulty for Israel. However, a profound change seems to be underway, since two giant off-shore natural gas deposits have been discovered in the Israeli exclusive economic zone in 2011. The Tamar and the Leviathan fields hold respectively 10 and between 19 and 22 trillion cubic feet of gas of estimated reserves, which could ensure decades of domestic consumption as well as …
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Collapse War in the Middle East?
The current war raging throughout Syria and Iraq is profoundly singular, because it combines itself with the social and environmental collapse, combined with the severe effects of climate change, known by these societies. In Iraq, the current war is waged between, on the one hand, the Kurdish forces, and the Iraqi army, both supported in a way or another by the Iranian forces and air strikes delivered by the US-led coalition (Rowan Scarborough, “Iranian Quds force aiding Iraqi Shiites with Obama administration’s blessing”, The Washington Times, September 20, 2014) and the aggressor, the Islamic State, on the other (Valantin, “Environment, Climate Change, War and the State”, The Red Team Analysis Society, March 16, 2015). It is in itself politically quite …
Environment, Climate Change, War and State
In his book Climate wars-the fight for survival as the world overheats (2010), author Gwynn Dyer proposes a “chronicle” of the coming decades, through a series of eight geopolitical scenarios going from 2019 to 2055 (“The Year 2045; Russia 2019; United States, 2029; Northern India, 2036; A Happy Tale; US and UK, 2055; China, 2042; Wipeout”). These scenarios are attempts to study the most probable political behaviours of governments, while climate change goes out of control. As the latter will affect the cycle of water, monsoons, seasons, thus food and water supply all over our world, whole nations will be faced with massive challenges and gigantic flows of “eco refugees”, while strategic tensions and risks of regional nuclear exchanges over …
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Turkey: An Energy and Environmental Power
On 1 December 2014, President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyit Erdogan and President of the Federation of Russia Vladimir Putin agreed on the implementation of a new gas pipeline, linking the Russian Federation to Turkey through the Black Sea ( “Gazprom to build new 63 bcm Black Sea pipeline to Turkey instead of South Stream”, Russia Today, December 1, 2014). This new project is called “Turkish stream” and replaces the late “South Stream”, which was meant to connect Russia to Europe, by crossing southern European countries. The decision of Bulgaria to withdraw from the project, in the context of the tensions regarding Ukraine between the U.S. and the EU, on the one hand, Russia, on the other, led …
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The Arctic, Russia and China’s Energy Transition
Numerous Chinese cities go through what is now dubbed an “airpocalypse” mainly due to the explosion of coal plants and transport by cars. In the meantime, Russia is renewing and expanding its network of oil and gas pipelines toward China. Meanwhile, the Arctic and subarctic region is going through a major atmospheric warming of more …
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Oil Flood (2) – Oil and Politics in a (Real) Multipolar World
The world oil flood is quickly rising. As we have seen in “Oil Flood (1): The Kingdom is Back”, the decisions taken by OPEC members and Russia not to curb oil production, while Saudi Arabia is forcing prices down, are much more about power politics and strategies than about economics and the “invisible hand” of the logic of “supply and demand”. We shall now focus on what the evolution of the current oil market reveals about current and future geopolitics. Since the end of November, especially since the 27 November OPEC meeting, prices have kept falling down, while the main producers, chiefly among them Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and the private U.S. companies, have all decided, for reasons of their own, to maintain …
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