The historic climate deal between China and the United States opens the door for unprecedented cooperation on energy and the environment. Still, energy remains a geopolitical and environmental challenge of global proportions. Oil consumption is poised to increase markedly in the decade ahead, despite moves in the United States and China to replace coal with natural gas and renewable sources. The new zone of bilateral cooperation comes at a time when China’s petroleum industry, North American oil resources, sanctions on Russian oil, Saudi Arabian oil production, and the global climate are experiencing a significant paradigm shift.
With China’s economy slowing after decades of double-digit growth, now is the time to think strategically about how the nation will deal with its physical resource limitations, their associated environmental concerns, and oil’s evolving geopolitical realities. The China Oil Forum will engage key thinkers, policymakers, and civil society in a discussion about these strategic questions.
Global Oil Paradigm Shift and China-U.S. Relations
The development of technologies to extract unconventional resources such as shale oil have led to low global crude prices. This constitutes a global oil paradigm shift.
The development of technologies to extract unconventional resources such as shale oil have led to low global crude prices. This constitutes a global oil paradigm shift. It encourages the two largest consumers of oil to consume even more, which means their decisions on how to react to this low oil price environment have a significant impact on the global oil market. The United States and China are also significant foreign policy actors in energy resource rich regions such as Sudan, South Sudan, and the Middle East. Xu Qinhua, Mikkal Herberg, and Matt Ferchen discussed how China and the United States are reacting to this paradigm shift and what the global implications of their actions are.
Xu Qinhua
Xu Qinhua is a professor at the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China. She graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University and Renmin University of China and has also studied at the University of Economics in the Czech Republic. She was the visiting scholar at University of Denver and University of California Berkeley, and senior researcher at the Asia Pacific Energy Research Center.
Matt Ferchen
Matt Ferchen specializes in China’s political-economic relations with emerging economies. At the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, he runs a program on China’s economic and political relations with the developing world.
Mikkal Herberg
Mikkal E. Herberg is research director of NBR's Energy Security Program. He is also a senior lecturer on international and Asian energy at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego.
Mikkal Herberg
Environmental Implications of the Global Oil Paradigm Shift
Different oils have different environmental impacts, as do their products. These must be taken into account when writing energy policies.
A low oil price environment has not brought as much renewable and alternative sources of energy to the market. Instead, it has brought us different kinds of oil, and oils are not created equal. They have different environmental impacts - climate emissions, air quality, water quality and water quantity - as do their products. Energy policy thus has to take into account environmental, water and energy security. China became a net exporter of petroleum products this year due to a significant refining capacity build out, while importing millions of tons of petroleum coke (a petroleum product) from the United States. Deborah Gordon, Scott Moore, David Livingston, and Wang Tao discussed the various environmental implications of the global oil paradigm shift.
Deborah Gordon
Deborah Gordon is director of Carnegie’s Energy and Climate Program, where her research focuses on oil and climate change issues in North America and globally.
Scott Moore
Scott Moore is currently Giorgio Ruffolo post-doctoral research fellow with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard University. He is a political and environmental scientist interested in the political and public policy dimensions of environmental change, particularly energy and climate, water resource, and marine issues. His current research focuses on the politics and policy dimensions of water scarcity, particularly in East and South Asia.
David Livingston
David Livingston is an associate in Carnegie’s Energy and Climate Program, where his research focuses on trade, markets, and risk. He previously worked at the World Trade Organization in Geneva and served as an adviser to the director of the Energy and Climate Change Branch of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna. He has consulted for a number of organizations on projects relating to climate change, green growth, and stranded assets.
Wang Tao
Wang Tao is a resident scholar in the Energy and Climate Program based at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. Linking the work of Carnegie’s programs in Beijing and its global centers in Washington, Moscow, Beirut, and Brussels, his research focuses on China’s climate and energy policy, with particular attention on unconventional oil and natural gas, transportation, electric vehicles, and international climate negotiation.
Scott Moore
Opportunities and Barriers for China’s International Oil Collaboration
China is becoming an increasingly engaged actor globally, as it seeks more secure sources for its oil and the technology to produce a shale revolution of its own.
China is becoming an increasingly engaged actor globally. Beijing’s concerns about energy security has led it to search for less risky sources of oil than places like Sudan, leading it to investigate Russian and Venezuelan energy exports. It has also been building pipelines in places like Myanmar and Russia, boosting interdependency while exposing itself to energy risks. Meanwhile, Beijing works to reform energy governance, seeking to quickly acquire technological expertise and managerial experience to hydraulically fracture shale and produce a shale revolution of its own. Bo Kong, Andrew Weiss, and Matt Ferchen explored China’s methods for, and implications of, collaborations with various countries around the world.
Andrew Weiss
Andrew S. Weiss is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees research in Washington and Moscow on Russia and Eurasia. Prior to joining Carnegie, he was director of the RAND Corporation’s Center for Russia and Eurasia and executive director of the RAND Business Leaders Forum.
Bo Kong
Bo Kong is the ConocoPhillips Petroleum professor of Chinese and Asian studies and assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma’s College of International Studies. He is also senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), senior associate in the Energy and National Security Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Matt Ferchen
Matt Ferchen specializes in China’s political-economic relations with emerging economies. At the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, he runs a program on China’s economic and political relations with the developing world.
Bo Kong
Prospects for China U.S. Cooperation on Oil and Its Impacts
China and the United States have multiple fronts for cooperation, including trading technology, the role of their navies in the international oil trade, domestic energy security, climate change issues, and dealing with other actors such as Afghanistan and Iran.
How good are the prospects for real cooperation on oil and its impacts, as opposed to skin-deep cooperation on oil and its impacts? Can a deep strategic mistrust be overcome to engage in deep dialogue on energy? Robert Hormats and Jessica T. Matthews discussed the synergies, fault lines, and future prospects for cooperation for the two largest oil consumers. They examined multiple fronts for cooperation, including trading technology, the role of their navies in the international oil trade, domestic energy security, climate change issues, and dealing with other actors such as Afghanistan and Iran.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews
Jessica Tuchman Mathews is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Before her appointment in 1997, her career included posts in both the executive and legislative branches of government, in management and research in the nonprofit arena, and in journalism and science policy.
Robert Hormats
Robert Hormats is vice chairman of Kissinger Associates Inc., the New York–based strategic international consulting firm that assesses and navigates emerging market geopolitical and macroeconomic risk for its clients. From September 2009 to July 2013, he served as under secretary of state for economic, energy and environmental affairs. Prior to this, Hormats was vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International) for 25 years.
Robert Hormats
