The Geopolitics of Natural Gas

Natural gas is currently seen as one of the most relevant sources of energy, used both for domestic use and for industrial or commercial use, it´s a type of energy less harmful to the environment, safe, accessible in economic terms, and the only alternative that, in practice, can massively replace coal and oil in various uses.

Natural gas is produced or obtained from fields in numerous countries, including the United States, Russia, Canada, England, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Australia, China, India, Germany, and Egypt among the most important producers.

It has gained greater utilization to generate electricity based on having continuous reliability in transmission and distribution lines. The generation of electricity with renewable energy is in a slow progressive way, but the main technological invention to be made is to have an infrastructure that allows storing what is generated and is used, at the time it requires maintaining the electricity frequency in a continuous mode in the networks. Due to this, the European Continent has implemented policies, investments, and adaptations of how this transition should be executed.

Faced with a lack of continuous and rapid evolution, in ceasing to depend on fossil fuels, natural gas will take an influential role from 2024, and it will be in having a continuous flow; not only to generate electricity in real-time in the old continent but in having in parallel to this raw material for storage. Which, in the wintertime, the stored reserves are used, and at this time they can be, between 30 to 40% of the total capacity.

That is why the concept of Russia's invasion of Ukraine can be analyzed in several ways, depending on the approach in which each person wants to carry it out. But basically, it lies at the end of the day, in an economic sense and a geopolitical positioning in the world world. One of the conditions observed mainly is the logistics of the primary energies that are sent and used by the old continent.

In Europe, 40% of the total natural gas it imports comes from Russia, and the countries that depend on gas in greater relevance are Macedonia with 100%, Finland 94%, Bulgaria 77%, Slovakia 70%, Germany 49%. 

Through Ukraine, there is a Transport Corridor, where three pipelines of high importance to Russia pass, and that is why Gazprom PJSC and Naftogaz Ukrainy since 2019 provided transportation of natural gas through Ukrainian territory until December 31, 2024.

Gas represents for Russia in the future, a raw material required for its income as a nation, given the transition that Europe intends to make, by ceasing to use coal to generate with zero emissions of greenhouse gases and/or CO2 to electricity in 2050. After this year, undertake a second phase of the transition in parallel with the world, having circulating mostly electric motors for transport (cars, planes, boats, etc.).

But in wars according to the experience in the last century, the parties involved have to negotiate to establish the new geopolitical positions of a territorial, economic nature and now the energy part will be introduced. Whoever loses will have to give in.

From 2020, the world changed the economy in the face of economic contractions due to the pandemic, and in 2022 global geopolitics will change confirming new alliances between countries. This with an eye on the future, to be able to face wars from an energy-economic point of view and to achieve as soon as possible the energy transition throughout the planet. The objective will lie from now on, in the form and amount that is taken from primary energies, the technologies to generate secondary energies, the way they are used, and how many of them are recovered to continue producing infinitely.

Countries have understood, depending on others, limits growth by not having control.

The US, Europe, and their allies have understood this concept, being the country of the stars and stripes, the first to reach it in 2015 in the hydrocarbon sector with partial independence. In the middle of 2020, it intends to be so in the mining sector, by initiating investments to obtain the minerals necessary for its energy transition from fossil fuel waste.

source: factorenergetico.mx