Geopolitical Structure Analysis of Typical Oil and Gas Countries in the World

I. Geographical relationship among countries in the world

The total surface area of the earth is about 51 million square kilometers, of which the ocean area is about 362 million square kilometers; The land area is about 149 million square kilometers, accounting for 71% and 29% of the global total area respectively. The oceans on the earth are connected, while the land is separated from each other. The distribution of land and sea is very uneven, and the land part is mainly distributed in the northern hemisphere and the eastern hemisphere. The world is divided into seven continents, followed by Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Oceania.

Asia is located in the northeast of the Old Hemisphere, bordering the Pacific Ocean, the Arctic Ocean and the Indian Ocean in the east, north and south respectively, and the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea in the west. 48 countries and regions are geographically divided into East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia and Central Asia. East Asia refers to the eastern part of Asia, including China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and Mongolia; Southeast Asia refers to southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei and other countries; South Asia refers to southern Asia, including Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim; West Asia refers to western Asia, including Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; Central Asia refers to Central Asia, including Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.

Europe is located in the northwest of the old hemisphere and to the west of Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean in the north, the Atlantic Ocean in the west, Africa across the Mediterranean Sea in the south, the Urals Mountains, ural river, the Great Caucasus Mountains, the Bosporus Strait and the Da Daniil Strait in the east, and North America across the Greenland Sea and the Danish Strait in the northwest. Geographically, it is divided into five regions: southern Europe, western Europe, central Europe, northern Europe and eastern Europe. Southern Europe includes Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Italy, Vatican San Marino, Malta, Spain, Portugal and Andorra; Western Europe includes Britain, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Monaco; Central Europe includes Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein; Northern Europe includes Iceland, Faroe Islands (Denmark), Denmark, Norway and Finland; Eastern Europe includes western Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova.

Africa is located in the southwest of the Eastern Hemisphere, which spans the north and south of the equator, and parts of the northwest go deep into the Western Hemisphere. It borders the Indian Ocean in the east, the Atlantic Ocean in the west, Europe across the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar in the north, and Asia in the northeast corner with the narrow Red Sea and Suez Canal. Geographically, it is customary to divide Africa into five regions: North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, South Africa and Central Africa. North Africa includes Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Azores and Madeira. East Africa includes Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Seychelles; West Africa includes Mauritania, Western Sahara, Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Sierra Leone, Liberia, C? te d 'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Niger, Nigeria and the Canary Islands; Central Africa includes Chad, Central Africa, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sao Tome and Principe; South Africa includes Zambia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Madagascar, Comoros, Mauritius, Reunion and St. Helena.

Oceania is located in the vast sea area north and south of the equator in the southwest and south of the Pacific Ocean. Include Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Australia, Ireland and new guinea.

north America is located in the northern part of the western hemisphere. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the east, the Pacific Ocean in the west, the Arctic Ocean in the north and South America by the Panama Canal in the south. Including Canada and the United States and Central America.

South America is located in the southern part of the western hemisphere, bordering the Atlantic Ocean in the east, the Pacific Ocean in the west, the Caribbean Sea in the north and Antarctica across the Drake Strait in the south. The northern part of South America includes Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela and Colombia. Central South America includes Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. South America includes Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and other countries. The eastern part of South America includes Brazil and other countries.

the geographical distribution of continents and countries in the world is shown in figure 3-3 (see the color map at the back of the book).

2. Consistency of political stance and belief

1. Islamic belief in countries rich in oil and natural gas

If the contemporary Islamic revival movement is a natural extension and a new development stage of the Islamic movement in modern times, then the extreme importance of oil to the modern industrial economy and the discovery of a large number of oil sources in the Middle East provide a new stage and variables for the contemporary Islamic revival movement. There are many reasons for the rise of contemporary Islamic revival movement. The prosperity of petroleum economy is also caused by many factors. We can't simply attribute the causes of one party to the other party, and form a closed "causal chain". But there is a direct or indirect connection between them.

In a nutshell, the relationship between petroleum economy and contemporary Islamic revival movement is mutually reinforcing and restrictive. The development of petroleum economy coexists with the revival of Islam, and the modernization of economy and the primitivism of religion constitute a unique gulf landscape on the earth. This landscape is particularly fascinating because of the strategic significance of oil, but at the same time it is difficult to predict good or ill luck because of radicalism in Islamic revival. With abundant oil resources as the cornerstone and holding high the banner of "Islamic revival", the Great Bay has a unique way to understand and influence the world. The mutual promotion of oil economy and Islamic revival is manifested in the following aspects.

First of all, the Islamic revival movement played a vital role in the struggle for independence and recovery of oil sovereignty in the Gulf countries.

at the beginning of the 2th century, western powers gradually realized the extreme importance of oil, and explored and exploited oil all over the world, and soon found abundant oil resources in the Middle East, especially in the Gulf region. With the support and protection of the government, major western companies flocked in and plundered Gulf oil at will. The Sudanese military regime, which came to power in 1958, vigorously promoted Arabic and opened many Islamic education centers, taking Islamization as a way to strive for national unity and restricting the activities of Catholic missionaries. Similar activities have been carried out in Pakistan, Egypt and other countries. With the promotion and cooperation of the civil revival movement in the Islamic world, Muslim oil-producing countries won the struggle against colonialism and for national independence, and their oil struggle gradually moved from decentralization to alliance. They also realized the alliance with the governments of non-Muslim oil-producing countries in Latin America, and successively established the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, pushing the struggle for recovering oil sovereignty to a new stage. When the war broke out in October 1973, the oil-producing countries in the Middle East United as one, took oil as a weapon, and won the first beautiful victory of Islam over the West in more than 1 years through measures such as production reduction, embargo and nationalization, which became an important milestone in the history of Islamic revival movement, ended the history of bullying and poverty in Islamic society in the late Ottoman Empire, regained the sovereignty of oil treasures and controlled the economic lifeline of the West in their hands.

Secondly, the oil economy in turn promoted the Islamic revival movement. Oil revenue has injected great vitality into the Islamic revival movement, making it move from Muslim society to the whole world; At the same time, because of its strategic importance and the characteristics of oil economy, oil has put forward higher goals for the Islamic revival movement, providing a legal basis for the existence of the Islamic revival movement in modern society. The increase in oil revenue, the development of economy and society, and the phenomenon of "Westernization" in some countries have aroused strong dissatisfaction and protests from Muslims, which is also one of the factors that promote the development of Islamic revival movement.

2. Consistency of political beliefs in western developed capitalist countries (including Western Europe, Central Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, etc.)

Western Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and other countries and regions are developed capitalist regions, and their political beliefs are relatively consistent, and they all advocate "democracy, freedom and human rights", so they are in many world-wide political, economic and diplomatic affairs. These western developed capitalist countries are the traditional regions of oil and gas consumption.

as we all know, although the average annual growth rate of oil and gas consumption in developing countries is faster than that in western developed capitalist countries, the oil and gas consumption in western developed capitalist countries accounts for nearly 7% of the world. For the overall needs of their economic development and national development, western developed capitalist countries can coordinate their policies and actions against oil and gas exporting countries.

III. Economic Characteristics and Complementarity

We divide North America, Western Europe, Central Europe, Japan, Oceania and other regions and countries into western developed countries. Their economies are developing rapidly, their industrial structures are relatively balanced, and the automobile industry and energy and chemical industry are very developed, which need a lot of oil and gas energy as the basis of their economic development. There is a direct ratio between industrial economy and oil demand, so the proportion of western economy in the world's total oil consumption is much higher than that of developing regions. The proportion of western industrial countries in world oil consumption has dropped from 71.7% in 1971 to 57.7% in 1995, but the absolute figure of western oil consumption has increased from 35.4 million barrels per day in 1971 to 4.3 million barrels in 1995. Moreover, the economies of Western Europe and Japan are more than 6% dependent on Middle East oil. The dependence of the western economy on oil, especially in the Middle East, can be seen.

In the early postwar period, artificially lowering the price of crude oil in the Middle East by Qatar (the seven oil sisters) was one of the important conditions for reviving the European economy. Driven by cheap oil, the western world has seen a "golden age" of economic development in the history of capitalism. Before 1973, the economies of Western Europe, Japan and the United States depended on imported crude oil by 98%, 99% and 33% respectively, of which more than 8% came from the Middle East. The two oil crises in 197s brought the western economy to the brink of collapse, and the economic growth actually stopped. It is estimated that the major industrial countries in the west suffered a loss of 1.2 trillion US dollars.

The dependence of the western economy on Gulf oil is asymmetric, that is, on the one hand, the dependence of the western economy on oil, especially Gulf oil, is greater than that of the latter on the former, which makes the western economy extremely fragile; On the other hand, countries that rely on oil exports have stronger tolerance for changes in the relationship between their economies and the West than the West. However, if we look at the relationship between the development track of the western economy in the past 5 years and the world oil-producing areas, we can find the interactive relationship between them. In short, there is an interactive functional relationship between western economy and world oil. Cheap and sufficient oil supply is an important prerequisite and one of the main driving forces for western economic development, and the oil crisis is the prelude to the western economic crisis; However, the sustained downturn in the western economy will in turn affect the world oil price, making it lower or sluggish.

In addition, countries in the Middle East and other regions that rely on oil export income have a large amount of "petrodollars", which have strong purchasing power and investment ability, so that the prosperity of the western economy is indirectly greatly influenced by these countries. It is particularly important that the industrial structure of most oil-producing countries in the Gulf and other regions is seriously out of balance in terms of commodity structure and economic structure. Although some countries have realized the problems of their national economic industrial structure and adopted some policies to develop industries other than petrochemical industry, at present, the industrial structure of countries rich in oil and gas in the Middle East is seriously out of balance, which makes their economic development excessively dependent on the export of oil and natural gas, which is highly complementary to the western industrial economy, and most of the finished products needed by these countries are imported from the west. It is worth mentioning that the arms purchasing power of these countries is very huge. To some extent, these countries have objectively promoted the progress of arms industry and technology through arms trade and promoted the development of the whole western economy.

IV. Geopolitical Status of Oil and Gas

Drawing on Mackinder's theory of geopolitics, we think that Xu Xiaojie (1998) of Petroleum Economy and Information Research Center of China Petroleum and Natural Gas Group Company is of typical significance to the development of geopolitical theory and its division of the geopolitical pattern of oil and gas in the world (Figure 3-4, see the color map at the back of the book). He believes that the traditional world supply centers (Middle East, North America and the former Soviet Union) are independent of each other, and in the next few decades, the new reality is that Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa will interact with each other in terms of supply, export and pricing, and become a new world oil and gas supply belt. At the same time, with the continuous development and opening up of Russia's oil and gas regions, a huge geographical zone will be formed from the Maghreb in North Africa, the Persian Gulf in the Middle East, the area around the Caspian Sea, Siberia in Russia and its Far East, which contains 68% of the world's oil reserves and 75% of the natural gas reserves. He calls it the "oil heart zone" of the world (black area in Figure 3-4), and it will be the main supply of oil and gas in the world in the next few decades. In the future, the demand for oil and gas will mainly come from Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and continental Europe, which are two "moon zones of internal demand" surrounding the "oil heartland" (red areas in Figure 3-4). At the same time, we should also see that North America, sub-Saharan Africa and Australasia (collectively known as Australia, New Zealand and the nearby South Pacific islands) will also put forward greater demand for the "oil heartland", which can be called "external demand plots". Oil and gas consumption in Western Europe, America and Australia, which are far away from Asia, Europe and Africa, accounts for 7% ~ 8% of the world's oil and gas consumption (blue area in Figure 3-4). According to this overall division method, we can make the following concrete analysis on the geopolitical relationship between oil and gas supply and demand.

1. Geopolitical overview of oil and gas supply

According to Xu Xiaojie's geopolitical division, from the current distribution of the remaining proven reserves of oil and gas in the world, oil and gas are mainly distributed in the "crescent belt" of the earth, that is, mainly in North Africa, the Middle East, the Caspian Sea, Central Asia and Western Siberia, and North America (to the northern part of South America) is also the main distribution area of oil and gas in the world. We regard North Africa-Middle East-Caspian Sea region-Central Asia-Siberia as the main supply area of the world oil and gas market-"the great oil and gas heartland" (the red zone in Figure 3-5, see the color map at the back of the book, the same below). Take North America, South America, Beihai area of Britain and West Africa as "external oil and gas supply zones" (blue zone in Figure 3-5).

according to regional distribution, 68% of oil reserves are concentrated in Middle East countries, with the former Soviet Union, Central and South America and Africa accounting for 8% ~ 6% respectively; 8% of natural gas reserves are concentrated in Russia, the Middle East and Central Asia.

due to OPEC regulations