Michael Bradshaw

• BSc, MA, PhD
• Professor at University of Warwick

In 2009, Geography Compass published a paper on ‘The Geopolitics of Global Energy Security’ that reviewed research on the key geographical factors influencing the secure and affordable supply of energy resources. Now, just over a decade later, the energy landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation, and the focus is no longer on fossil fuel sc...

In this perspectives piece, an interdisciplinary team of social science researchers considers the implications of Covid-19 for the politics of sustainable energy transitions. The emergency measures adopted by states, firms, and individuals in response to this global health crisis have driven a series of political, economic and social changes with p...

The COVID-19 pandemic has already disrupted large swathes of the global economy, threatening the growth models of major oil and gas producer countries like Russia. A collapse in oil prices, triggered by the pandemic, once again exposed Russia’s enduring susceptibility to sharp falls in oil and gas prices. We argue that this decline in oil prices ca...

This opinion article offers insights into the geopolitics of the ongoing global energy transition. In doing so, it draws heavily on a workshop in Berlin in late 2018, and a subsequent paper in the journal Nature. Four scenarios are presented. First, the “Big Green Deal” offers a positive story of the future, under the assumption that there will be...

The recent 2017–18 “dash for gas” captured global attention, but also exposed critical failings in China’s gas market. The 2019 lull imposed by the Government reflects the need to address local challenges. This paper analyzes the prospects for demand growth and assesses the various ways in which that demand can be met. There is considerable uncerta...

The COP24 meeting in Katowice, Poland, made clear the divisions between the winners and losers of a low-carbon energy transition. The IPCC's 1.5 °C report shows that climate change mitigation must see an early peak in oil demand and a rapid fall in consumption thereafter. The ‘shale revolution’ and the falling cost and rapid deployment of renewable...

Transitioning to a low-carbon world will create new rivalries, winners and losers, argue Andreas Goldthau, Kirsten Westphal and colleagues. Transitioning to a low-carbon world will create new rivalries, winners and losers, argue Andreas Goldthau, Kirsten Westphal and colleagues. Men stand in front of circular solar panels at a solar park in Dubai

This article argues that the oil industry is unlikely to return to the pre-2014 status quo as two profound shifts in technology and markets are dramatically changing the longer-term outlook for the oil industry. In the short term, traditional producers will feel persistent pressure from the shale revolution, a disruptive technology that has altered...

These are turbulent and uncertain times for the global oil and gas industry. This paper examines the industry's emerging new political economy in terms of competition (or a trade-off) both between and within International Oil Companies (IOCs) for rival oil and gas prospects. A qualitative cross-case analysis of Argentinian shale and Brazilian deep-...

Public and stakeholder engagement with shale development is difficult, but essential. We review 26 engagement processes carried out by US and Canadian companies, alliances, government agencies, academics and activists; systematically exploring who participates, the stage at which engagements take place, aims and methods, provision for multiway enga...

FULL EGRG REPORT (ACCOMPANIES SHORTER EPA COMMENTARY)

This Exchanges commentary is concerned with the health of Economic Geography as a sub-discipline, and economic geography (as a wider community of practice) in one of its historical heartlands, the UK. Against a backdrop of prior achievement, recent years have witnessed a noticeable migration of economic geographers in the UK from Departments of Geo...

The UK has ambitious, statutory long-term climate targets that will require deep decarbonisation of its energy system. One key question facing policymakers is the role of natural gas both during the transition towards, and in the achievement of, a future low-carbon energy system. Here we assess a range of possible futures for the UK, and find that...

This paper explores the conflict over shale gas exploration in Lancashire where the company Cuadrilla is preparing to horizontally drill and hydraulically fracture the first shale gas wells in England. At present, this is the only location in Europe where new commercial exploration for shale gas is underway, thus the outcome has wider significance....

Russia's Far East: New Dynamics in Asia Pacific and Beyond. By Rensselaer Lee and Artyom Lukin . Boulder, CO: Lynner Rienner Publishers, 2015. xi, 276 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Figures. Tables. Maps. $68.00, hard bound. - Volume 76 Issue 3 - Michael Bradshaw

Energy markets are an important contemporary site of economic globalization. In this article we use a global production network (GPN) approach to examine the evolutionary dynamics of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector and its role in an emerging global market for natural gas. We extend recent work in the relational economic geography literature...

With energy supplies being central to human wellbeing, secure and affordable supplies of energy are a key concern of the state. Traditional conceptions of energy security have focused on physical security of supply. This represents the dominant interests of the Western industrialized economy. However, the rise of new centers of demand is resulting...

The United States and Canada have been at the forefront of shale oil and gas development via hydraulic fracturing. Understanding public perceptions is important given the role that they may play in future policy decisions in both North America and other parts of the world where shale development is at a much earlier stage. We review 58 articles per...

Russia’s role in the global economic system today, and the Soviet Union’s in the past, is dominated by the export of natural resources, particularly oil and gas. The rents earned from these exports are both a source of strength and weakness, as they link the fortunes of Russia’s domestic economy to the volatility of global resource markets. This pa...

In 1953, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the hidden costs of what he was to later describe as the “military-industrial complex.” Ike said: “We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.” The leaders of today’s Russia...

No abstract is available for this article.

The ‘nexus’ between water, energy and food (WEF) has gained increasing attention globally in research, business and policy spheres. We review the premise of recent initiatives framed around the nexus, examine the challenge of achieving the type of disciplinary boundary crossing promoted by the nexus agenda and consider how to operationalise what ha...

Recent political and military events in Ukraine have brought into sharp focus concerns over the security of European gas supplies from Russia. At the same time, the creation of an infrastructural and political ‘energy union’ has become a key stated priority for the governing bodies of the European Union. Both contingencies have highlighted the 28-n...

This chapter examines the various ways in which the current global energy system is unsustainable and identifies the policy challenges that must be overcome to bring about a transition to a more sustainable system. The first section examines global energy dilemmas and addresses two issues: first, the relationship between energy and climate change t...

A Tokyo-based economist and a noted western economic geographer, both specializing in the hydrocarbon resources of Russia, apply the framework of governance studies in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the recent changes in the country's energy policy-making. The authors argue that, unlike the international relations paradigm prevailing i...

The aim of this paper is to analyse spectral reflectance data from Landsat TM of vegetation that has been exposed to hydrocarbon contamination from oil spills from pipelines. The study is undertaken in an area of mangrove and swamp vegetation where the detection of an oil spill is traditionally difficult to make. We used a database of oil spill rec...

This paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process, involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity. The paper draws on a seminar series on the ‘Geographies of Energy Transition: security, climate, governance' hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011, which initiated a d...

Leading energy experts examine how and to what extent countries in the Asia-Pacific are integrating liquefied natural gas (LNG) into their energy-security strategies and analyze the key geopolitical implications for the United States and Asia.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the key issues relating to the impact of mineral industries on communities and to demonstrate how the different stages of the extractive cycle come with varying scales of impact on communities. For a focused view on these issues, a case study of proposed oil sands development in Nigeria is presented.

During the 1990s hydrocarbon fuels were relatively cheap and plentiful and it was assumed that the investments of the international energy companies, together with a functioning global market, would deliver secure and affordable supplies of energy. Since the turn of the century, however, there has been growing concern about the ability of energy pr...

Even before the disaster at the Macondo field in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, there was growing recognition that it was getting increasingly difficult and costly to meet the growing global demand for energy. This paper focuses on two related issues: the emergence of a new energy paradigm and the globalization of energy demand. The new energy p...

This paper examines the relationship between global energy security and climate change policy. There are growing concerns about the sustainability of the future supply of hydrocarbons. The energy system is the single largest source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, therefore it is no surprise that decarbonising the supply of energy services is a k...

A noted British specialist in Russia's economic geography and the Far East region presents a comprehensive account of the development of the onshore and offshore oil and gas deposits of Sakhalin. Following a review of early multinational activity in geological surveying and exploration during the 1970s, he charts subsequent changes in the entities...

This study examines the geopolitics of global energy security, defined as the influence of geographical factors, such as the distribution of centres of supply and demand, on state and non-state actions to ensure adequate, affordable and reliable supplies of energy. The first part of this study describes the geographical dimensions of energy supply...

In this cogent, well-researched article, Michael Bradshaw explores the changes that have occurred in the Russian Oil and Gas industry since Vladimir Putin became President of the Federation in 2000, paying particular attention to the Kremlin's evolving relationships with prominent international oil companies. Dr. Bradshaw first outlines the growing...

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This paper poses three main questions. Who is investing in Russia? Foreign investment is dominated by companies from the US and EU, plus countries such as Cyprus and Switzerland which represent returning Russian flight capital. Which sectors of the economic are benefiting from such investment? Initial investment flows were dominated by market-orien...

Sitting astride the Eurasian landmass and occupying a territory of 17,098.2 thousand square kilometres, and spanning 11 time zones from Kaliningrad in the west to Kamchatka in the east, Russia is the largest state in the world in terms of territorial extent. Its northern shores wash against the Artic Ocean, while the southern resort region of Krasn...

An international consortium under the leadership of Shell was trying to exploit the world's largest integrated gas and oil reserve near Sakhalin Island. Non-governmental organisations around the world mobilised to stop international financial institutions from providing credit for Sakhalin II. They said the project violated basic environmental requ...

This article responds to a plea for economic geographers to play greater attention to the world's resource peripheries. The article presents a detailed case study of oil and gas development offshore of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East. The study serves to illustrate the complexity of resource peripheries and to demonstrate how a critical approach t...

A UK-based authority on Russia's economic geography examines the geographical dimensions of Russia's resource abundance, devoting particular attention to the spatial redistribution of resource rents generated by extraction, primary processing, and fabrication. After establishing Russia's credentials as a "resource-abundant economy," the author iden...

This article examines the population trends in the cities of the Russian Far East between the two census years 1989 and 2002. Three geographical models – Rank-Size Rule, Temperature per Capita and a simple gravity model – are used to describe the direction of these population trends. An economic efficiency function is constructed from the three mod...

During the Soviet period, central control over foreign economic relations enabled foreign trade to address national economic problems. In geographical terms, funds generated by Siberia's resource exports were used to finance imports of western technology and agricultural products that were largely consumed in the European regions. In the post-Sovie...

The concept of "Russian Heartland," elaborated previously by Hooson (1964) for the USSR on the basis of Mackinder's (1919) forecast of the emergence of a land-based global power controlling the center of the Eurasian landmass, is revisited by two British geographers in the new economic, demographic, and political context of post-Soviet Russia. Usin...

The next decade will be crucial for Asian gas markets and determine whether natural gas will become a major fuel in the key energy markets of China, India, Japan and Korea, or will remain a "promising" but peripheral energy source. Natural Gas in Asia is a new edition of a 2002 study on the future of natural gas in the major energy markets of Asia....

Two economic geographers specializing in the mineral resources of the former Soviet Union and Russia discuss a paper on Russian oil published in this journal by a seasoned observer of this critical subject since the early 1970s. The authors comment on the behavior of Russian oil companies such as Yukos, Russian economic policy in mid-2004, and the...

This paper examines the development of the Sakhalin projects to determine what lessons can be learnt about the prospects for foreign investment in Russian oil and gas industry. The paper is divided into three substantive sections. The first section reviews the current status of the Sakhalin projects. Following the annulment of the Sakhalin-3 projec...

Two economic geographers examine trends in economic performance and quality of life of the population in Russia's regions from 1990 to the first years of the 21st century. The paper compares the results of tests for regional inequality according to a wide variety of standardized measures: gross regional product, personal income, unemployment, consu...

Two geographers assess the results of the State Duma elections in Sakhalin Oblast and relate the regional pattern of voting to varying socio-economic conditions of the region. The research is structured to test a working hypothesis that voting patterns in large part can be explained by regional variations in economic structure and performance. More...

The spring of 2003 saw a number of key announcements relating to the Sakhalin oil and gas projects. After considerable speculation, the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company announced that it was to go ahead with a $10 billion investment to construct Russia’s first liquefied natural gas plant to export gas to Northeast Asia. This article examines the...

Theorizing in economic geography has focused on core regions, industrial and non-industrial, old and new. Indeed, contemplation of the idea of globalization has reinforced this quest. This paper disputes this blinkered thinking that peripheralizes resource peripheries, and seeks to re-position and emphasize resource peripheries within economic geog...

This article presents an analysis of the 'progress' made by the 27 transition economies in their transformation towards some form of market economic system. A world-systems framework is employed to position these economies within a global economic context. Three elements of economic transition are then assessed: recovery from transitional recession...

Two British economic geographers present a critical assessment of the development of the Novgorod region in the 1990s, questioning some of the practices employed by Novgorod Oblast Governor Mikhail Prusak to strengthen his political position within the region and to implement an economic development strategy. The paper reviews economic policies of...

The paper examines the prospects for resource-based development in the Russian Far East. It adopts a critical perspective on the potential for resource-based development by examining problems with Far East resource industries, specifically by looking at the experience of the other resource economies more generally. In particular, it highlights the...

This special issue of Communist Economies and Economic Transformation presents some of the findings from a three-year research project which has been funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (grant R000 236 398). The project has been based in the Centre for Russian and East European Studies and the School of Geography at the University...

The real threat posed by the current energy crisis in the Russian Far East (RFE) is the extent to which the shortage of integrating factors such as money, power and communication can promote a 'drifting away' of the region from the European core towards closer integration with Northeast Asia. We shall argue that there is, in the short and medium te...

The transitional recession and now economic crisis in the Russian Far East have left the island of Sakhalin Oblast with little alternative but to hope that the international oil and gas companies will invest in offshore oil and gas projects. The historical background to these projects commences with the exploration of offshore acreage dating back t...

The paper examines the changing relationship between political and economic factors that have influenced economic relations between the Republic of South Korea and Russia from 1992 through Korea's financial crisis in late 1997. Also presented is a historical account of evolving political interaction and bilateral trade between South Korea and the S...

This chapter examines the relative significance of Western and Eastern influences upon the evolving structure of the Baltic economies and what those influences might mean for the future. While incorporation into the Soviet state led to an industrialisation of the Baltic economies to suit the needs of planners and politicians in Moscow, the historic...

The chair of a roundtable session entitled “The Russian North in Transition,” the papers of which constitute this special issue of Post-Soviet Geography, outlines general theoretical and methodological issues that must be addressed in the study of change in this region of Russia. Particular attention is focused on problems of defining the Russian N...

The collapse of the Soviet Union has resulted in the creation of 15 independent states. This paper examines the contribution of world-systems theory to our understanding of the role of the Soviet Union in the global economy and considers the prospects for the post-Soviet states. It concludes that world-systems theory, together with regional geograp...

This communication focuses on the foreign trade relations of the Russian Far East and the nature of foreign investment activity within the region. Any assessment of the foreign trade potential of the region must consider variations in levels of economic development and foreign trade activity within the Russian Far East. The starting point is a cons...