1. The Geopolitical Impact
of the Shale Revolution
Prof . Dr. Rob de Wijk
Director HCSS
Professor of IR, The Hague Campus, Leiden University

2. Main trends:
Multipolarity and fragmentation:
• Weakening of the West
• America’s ‘rebalancing’
• Rise of ‘Clubs’ or ad-hoc groupings
• Rise of state capitalism
• Europe’s institutional crisis and separatism
• Empowerment of the individual

3. Geopolitical change:
It’s all about China
3

4. A new great game?

5. Pivot or rebalancing
• Announced in Foreign Policy, November 2011
• 2,500 US Marines will train in Australia
• Manila Declaration celebrating the US – 60th
anniversary of the defense treaty with The
Philippines.
• Naval deployments, e.g. in Singapore
• Air Sea battle

6. Example: the AirSea Battle Concept

7. Declining powers: retrenchment
• Shifting resources from peripheral to core
interests.
• More emphasis on collective or cooperative
security and multilateralism
• Reduce the military footprint en use the
‘retrenchment dividend’ for economic
development

8. The Share Revolution facilitates
the rebalancing

9. The Shale Gas Revolution and Europe
New geopolitical dynamics
• U.S. reduces energy independence on fragile states
• Shale Revolutions facilitates Rebalancing and ‘leading from behind’
New economic dynamics:
• Energy prices could drop or remain lower in the U.S.
• LNG rerouted to Europe and Japan
• US: inshoring of energy intensive industries
• Europe’s competitiveness weakens
• Reinforced by focus on low carbon economy
New regional dynamics
• Declining revenues will affect important energy exporters
• Difficult to buy off unrest

10. Europe
• Major reserves in France, Poland,
Ukraine
• Exploration decisions driven by
environmental, geopolitical and
historical reasons

11. Poland

12. Origin of EU gas imports, 2010
1,50%
2,80%
1,30%
0,20%
3,60%
7,70%
Russia
31,80%
Norway
Algeria
Qatar
8,60%
Others
Nigeria
Libya
Trinidad and Tobago
14,40%
Egypt
Turkey
28,20%

13. Declining revenues
• No challenge of energy exporting countries
with big SWF (Norway, Qatar)
• Modest challenge for highly developed states
like Denmark and the Netherlands.
• Huge challenge for ‘rentier states’ without big
SWF and high youth unemployment (Algeria,
Russia)

14. Russia
• Putin´s power base is energy
• End of cheap energy
• Controversies between the states and the
private sector
• High taxes and government regulation
• Too little modernization
• Aging population

15. Conclusion
The shale revolution:
• Facilitates ‘rebalancing’ and ‘retrenchment’
• Strategic behavior of Poland and Ukraine
• Instability in Europe´s neighbourhood
• Negative consequences for Europe´s economic
development
• New economy - environment – stability nexus