the new petro power paradigm - Diplomat Magazine

ENERGY|Di spatches
In this special special three-part series on the global resurgence of fossil fuels:
• Political scientist Wolfgang Depner looks at the Top 10 countries, some of
them unexpected, with the best chances of expanding oil and gas production
early in the 21st Century.
• Ottawa economist Andre Plourde assesses the rapidly growing importance of
shale oil and shale gas to North American energy independence in the coming
decades.
• Energy Probe executive director Lawrence Solomon anticipates the
revolutionary political and economic implications inherent in the vast shale oil
deposits discovered in the Shfela Basin.
Gas and oil
galore
Winners: The Top 10 rising contenders for energy superstar status
By Wolfgang Depner
“Control energy and you control the nations.” This thesis, as advocated
by Henry Kissinger, might not be the most original theory that
advances our understanding of politics, particularly in the arena of
international relations. Determinism of this sort unduly diminishes the role
of other, non-materialistic factors in the fortunes of nations, for if it were true,
we would not think of South Sudan as an afflicted country. But as historian
Paul Kennedy and others have reminded us, energy has always played a pivotal,
even primary, role in the rise and fall of great powers. Indeed, if historians
were geologists, they might be inclined to vigorously stratify the various
eras of human history and their respective events according to their dominant
source of energy. Noted political strategist Kevin Phillips did as much
in his book American Theocracy: The Perils of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed
Money in the 21st Century (2006) where he writes that “the world’s age of oil
has also been its era of American supremacy” — and argues that both might
have already peaked.
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