The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations, Daniel Yergin.

AuthorFitzgerald, Timothy

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations, Daniel Yergin (Penguin, 2020) 430 pages, ISBN 978-1-59420-643-6.

Daniel Yergin is a fixture in energy and geopolitical circles. He initially became well-known for his iconic history of the oil industry, The Prize. An historian by training, Yergin has delivered another engaging popular narrative weaving energy markets, global geopolitics, and historical anecdote into a rich and thought-provoking volume. In that sense The New Map is similar to his previous book, The Quest, which highlighted changes to historic patterns. Indeed, many of the same themes arise. In The New Map, Yergin is more perspicacious about the overlapping global outlooks on changes in energy production and consumption, and how those differing perspectives precipitate geopolitical rivalry and realignment. Put another way, he contextualizes a number of energy industry and market trends in a broad and ever-shifting geopolitical landscape by means of six maps. Aimed at a popular audience, this book is a fluid narrative with valuable coherence and consistency.

The first of the six is America's map. Starting with the unassuming backdrop of the S.H. Griffin #4 (credited as being the fracking discovery well drilled in 1998 in Texas), Yergin weaves a charismatic and character-focused narrative about the advent of unconventional oil and gas development. He repeats the discovery myth of fracking that he laid out in The Quest, with George Mitchell headlining. Then the scene moves from natural gas to oil and Mark Papa substitutes into the charismatic protagonist role. Each of these stories is reminiscent of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in which the legend has become fact, and so we print the legend and enjoy the smooth narrative. Yergin then documents the spillovers to other sectors of the U.S. economy, particularly focusing on manufacturing. The reversal of the plumbing of U.S. liquefied natural gas rounds out the discussion. Then Yergin's gaze becomes broader, across the whole western hemisphere. Perhaps the title should be Americas' Map. The opportunity of exports to Mexico, the controversy over Keystone XL and other pipelines, contrasting the energy policies of Mexico and Brazil, and the lifting of the U.S. crude oil export ban all involve other countries. This helps set up Yergin's hypothesis that changes in energy production and consumption have shifted geopolitical balances around the world.

The second map is Russia's map. Yergin focuses on how this map has changed in the age of Putin, though he does have to trace a few threads back into the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. Russia has long been an important global producer. Much of the discussion surrounds natural gas, which Russia has supplied to Europe as native production has waned and climate ambition has waxed. The difficulty is that the legacy pipeline network transited Ukraine, and erstwhile Soviet republic with a strong western ambitions. Starting with the Orange...

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