This book provides a critical overview of how China’s growing need for oil imports is shaping its international economic and diplomatic strategy and how this affects global political relations and behaviour. It draws together the various dimensions of China’s international energy strategy, and provides insights into the impact of this on China’s growing presence across the world.

This authoritative book on China's oil demand and government policies and practices rests on two essential foundations: first and foremost on the author's considerable knowledge of China's oil situation and prospects, together with his access to Chinese energy literature and data; and secondly, on that insight afforded to him and, therefore, his readers from his fluency in Chinese.The author analyzes the Chinese oil market and the rising pressure on Beijing to reform policies which constrain China's ability to meet soaring demand and to pay for crucial imports at a time of growing political and economic uncertainties. Dr Wang acknowledges the importance of China meeting its growing domestic oil demand, if at all possible, through national production. The sheer weight of China's population, and its burgeoning requirements as industrialization spreads into most regions, dwarfs the needs of others and places unprecedented strain on international oil trades.The author stresses the fact that the outcome is hard to define, yet the time required to tackle the nation's energy needs is not limitless. Moreover, he reminds the reader of the perennial difficulty in meeting widely disparate economic and energy needs in different regions of the vast country.

In the past decade, the need for oil in Asia's new industrial powers, China and India, has grown dramatically. The New Kings of Crude takes the reader from the dusty streets of an African capital to Asia's glistening corporate towers to provide a first look at how the world's rising economies established new international oil empires in Sudan, amid one of Africa's longest-running and deadliest civil wars. For over a decade, Sudan fuelled the international rise of Chinese and Indian national oil companies. But the political turmoil surrounding the historic division of Africa's largest country, with the birth of South Sudan, challenged Asia's oil giants to chart a new course. Luke Patey weaves together the stories of hardened oilmen, powerful politicians, rebel fighters, and human rights activists to show how the lure of oil brought China and India into Sudan--only later to ensnare both in the messy politics of a divided country. His book also introduces the reader to the Chinese and Indian oilmen and politicians who were willing to become entangled in an African civil war in the pursuit of the world's most coveted resource. It offers a portrait of the challenges China and India are increasingly facing as emerging powers in the world.

Windfall is the boldest profile of the world’s energy resources since Daniel Yergin’s The Quest, asserting that the new energy abundance—due to oil and gas resources once deemed too expensive—is transforming the geo-political order and is boosting American power. “Riveting and comprehensive...a smart, deeply researched primer on the subject.” —The New York Times Book Review As a new administration focuses on driving American energy production, O’Sullivan’s “refreshing and illuminating” (Foreign Policy) Windfall describes how new energy realities have profoundly affected the world of international relations and security. New technologies led to oversupplied oil markets and an emerging natural gas glut. This did more than drive down prices—it changed the structure of markets and altered the way many countries wield power and influence. America’s new energy prowess has global implications. It transforms politics in Russia, Europe, China, and the Middle East. O’Sullivan considers the landscape, offering insights and presenting consequences for each region’s domestic stability as energy abundance upends traditional partnerships, creating opportunities for cooperation. The advantages of this new abundance are greater than its downside for the US: it strengthens American hard and soft power. This is “a powerful argument for how America should capitalise on the ‘New Energy Abundance’” (The Financial Times) and an explanation of how new energy realities create a strategic environment to America’s advantage.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution energy has been a key driver of world politics. From the oil crises of the 1970s to today’s rapid expansion of renewable energy sources, every shift in global energy patterns has important repercussions for international relations. In this new book, Thijs Van de Graaf and Benjamin Sovacool uncover the intricate ways in which our energy systems have shaped global outcomes in four key areas of world politics: security, the economy, the environment and global justice. Moving beyond the narrow geopolitical focus that has dominated much of the discussion on global energy politics, they also deftly trace the connections between energy, environmental politics, and community activism. The authors argue that we are on the cusp of a global energy shift that promises to be no less transformative for the pursuit of wealth and power in world politics than the historical shifts from wood to coal and from coal to oil. This ongoing energy transformation will not only upend the global balance of power; it could also fundamentally transfer political authority away from the nation state, empowering citizens, regions and local communities. Global Energy Politics will be an essential resource for students of the social sciences grappling with the major energy issues of our times.

Access to oil and natural gas, and their prices, are hugely important axes of geo-political strategy and global economic prospects and have been for a century. This book, written by a Financial Times journalist who has long covered the energy sector, provides readers with the essential information they need for understanding the shifting structure of the global oil and gas economy: where the reserves lie, who produces what, trade patterns, consumption trends, prices. The book highlights political and social issues in the global energy sector -- the domestic inequality, civil conflict and widespread poverty that dependence on oil exports inflicts on developing countries and the strategies of wealthy countries (especially the United States) to control oil-rich regions. Energy demand is on a strong upward trend. The reality of the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels cannot be doubted. What are likely to be the human consequences: changing disease vectors, unprecedented flooding, mass migration? And what is to be done both in the wealthy countries where consumerism drives increasing growth in demand and in developing countries aiming to grow their economies faster? Are alternative energy sources a panacea? Or will the much vaunted hydrogen economy still be based on oil, natural gas and coal? Here is a book that addresses what is perhaps the most pervasive and destabilizing of the issues facing humanity.