p5 Flashcards
Reliance on fossil fuels
The point has already been made that today’s world continues to rely on fossil fuels for the greater part of its energy needs. The human use of carbon fuels has progressed through a long sequence, starting in prehistoric times with fuelwood and possibly peat.
This was eventually followed by the coal era of the Industrial Revolution (see Figure 5.2, page 95). During the twentieth century, oil overtook coal as the major carbon fuel, but today it is being challenged by natural gas as the dominant fuel. Figure 5.10 takes into account all three fossil fuels and tells us who today’s major consumers are.
Mismatch between fossil fuel supply and demand
Any assessment of the degree of mismatch between fossil fuel supply and demand needs to look at the three fuels separately. Here the focus will be on two distributions for each fuel. In the following section, the focus will shift to the outcomes of any mismatches in terms of trade flows and energy pathways.
Coal
- Although the consumption of coal is declining relative to the other two fossil fuels, production continues to increase.
- China is by far the largest producer, followed by the USA (Table 5.3).
- A long way behind come Australia, Indonesia and India.
- The mismatch between the distributions of coal production and consumption appears to be small, in that China and the USA are clearly the two largest consumers.
- It is interesting to note that a number of the remaining leading consumers are, in fact, also producers of coal.
- This reflects the fact that coal is characterised by high transport costs relative to a low energy density.
Coal production
Country
Production (m tonnes)
China
3,650.0
USA
922.1
India
605.8
Australia
431.2
Coal consumption
Country
Consumption (m tonnes)
China
1,839.4
USA
502.1
Japan
117.6
Oil
- well over half the oil supply comes from the two international groups of OPEC and North America (Canada, USA and Mexico).
- The relatively small amount of oil production in oil-thirsty Europe clearly signals one important mismatch.
- Interestingly, all four BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are shown to rank among the oil producers.
- three of the oil producers (USA, China and India) are also major importers of oil, however, The other big oil consumers are all industrialised countries in either Asia or Europe.
- Oil is the most interesting fossil fuel because of its demand as a transport fuel; there is no substitute, as there is with coal and gas (mostly electricity and industry), so there is a deeper global market and differences between consumers and producers.
Gas
Global gas production is dominated by the USA and Russia (Table 5.4). Other noteworthy suppliers are to be found in the Middle East, Asia and Canada. As with oil, gas production has a global but uneven spread. A particularly interesting aspect of Table 5.4 is that some of the leading gas producers are also leading gas consumers.
Of course, it makes basic sense for any country to make the fullest use possible of its domestic sources of energy.
Energy pathways
It should be clear from the above brief examination of the global production and consumption distributions of coal, oil and gas that there are mismatches. Such mismatches are resolved by the creation of energy pathways that allow transfers to take place between producers and consumers. The spatial tensions between supply and demand largely reflect a tension between physical and human geography. The former has determined the location of energy resources, while the latter has conditioned where those resources are needed.
energy pathway - Coal
Figure 5.13 shows that there is still a significant global trade in coal. Particularly interesting is the fact that three of the largest coal producers - China, India and the USA - also import coal.
Clearly, Australia and Indonesia export large quantities of coal to the first two countries, as well as to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
energy pathway - Oil
The energy pathways of oil are considerable (Figure 5.14).
The Middle East is clearly the number one global producer;
there are flows from here to Asia, Europe and even to the USA.
The USA, despite being an oil producer, also draws oil flows from northern South America, West Africa and even Europe. There is only one energy pathway from Russia, and that is to Europe.
energy pathway - Gas
The energy pathways of gas are not so very different from those of oil. Gas flows occur in two different ways: either directly through pipelines, or converted into a liquid form (LNG) and moved by tanker ships.
The former are most conspicuously used for the export of Russian gas to Europe, while Middle Eastern gas is largely delivered by sea. Delivery of gas from other supply nodes, such as Trinidad, Nigeria and Indonesia, is also mainly in the form of LNG.
One inescapable fact to be noted is that all the energy pathways are themselves consumers of energy
Russian gas to Europe
It has already been shown that:
Russia is the world’s second largest producer of gas (see Table 5.4, page 101)
* it also imports a significant amount of gas, presumably to help meet its own needs
* most of its gas exports go to Europe via a network of pipelines.
the fact that three of those pipelines cross Ukraine, bearing in mind Russia’s recent military action there, including incursions into Eastern Ukraine and annexing Crimea in 2014. From a Russian perspective, Ukraine is in a position to make life difficult for the Russian gas industry, for example by threatening to hike the price it charges for allowing the transfer of gas across its territory. Indeed, it could stop the flows altogether.
Russian anxiety about its pipelines across Ukraine has perhaps been increased by the possibility that Ukraine might join the EU and become a member of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
Russian gas to Europe 2
All this presents Russia with two basic options:
- substantially reduce or stop the delivery of gas across Ukraine by exporting most of the gas through the two northern pipelines, which could place Finland and Poland in the same situation as Ukraine
- annexe the Ukraine - problem solved?
Currently, it looks as if Russia is giving serious consideration to the latter option. Given the history of strained political relations between Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) and Western Europe, the EU would be wise not to increase its reliance on Russian gas. Heavy reliance on any imported energy carries the potential risk of being involved in various forms of political and economic blackmail. Nevertheless, although the UK still obtains most of its gas from Qatar, in 2015 it agreed to nearly double its imports of Russian gas to 29.1 billion cubic metres a year by 2021. This is to offset the declining output from the UK’s North Sea gas fields.
Unconventional sources of fossil fuel
Tar sands
Oil shale
Shale gas
Deepwater oil
Tar sands
A mixture of clay, sand, water and bitumen (a heavy, viscous oil)
Tar sands have to be mined and then injected with steam to make the tar less viscous so that it can be pumped out
