Prices can sometimes differ slightly from one region to another because of political, geographic and infrastructure factors, and quality can vary. But since various grades can be blended together to meet the processing specifications of a refiner, the spread between most grades is relatively narrow, ensuring that importers typically have ample choice in suppliers at market rates. Ultimately, a barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia usually ends up having comparable value to a barrel from Angola. Fungibility often allows the market to function globally in scale.
A useful comparison is natural gas. The commodity cannot be moved around the globe nearly as cheaply or easily as crude, so prices vary considerably more from one regional market to another. This is beginning to change as countries build out infrastructure for LNG. But the liquefaction process and associated infrastructure are still expensive enough – accounting for as much as 30-40 percent of the price of the commodity – to make LNG uncompetitive against compressed natural gas transported via pipeline in most cases. As a result, countries are far more likely to remain dependent on pipelines to meet their natural gas needs – and besides, pipelines themselves are expensive to build, and they are captive to a small number of suppliers (and vice versa). In the past couple decades, natural gas dependencies have taken on greater geopolitical importance than those stemming from crude. For example, Russia’s cutoff of natural gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine at the height of winter in 2006, 2009 and 2014 illustrated how an exporter can leverage natural gas dependencies for strategic gain.
Countries are rarely able to weaponize oil in such a manner. Exporters may band together to try to limit supply to affect global prices, as demonstrated with mixed success repeatedly by OPEC. Two countries may operate outside the global market by forging special arrangements that serve narrow commercial or strategic aims. (Around a fifth of global production is not sold on markets.) But in these situations, the global oil market otherwise still functions normally, with most importers still able to ensure stable supplies from various sellers at market rates priced transparently against a handful of benchmarks. Countries can easily avoid long-term dependencies. A major exporter like Saudi Arabia is rarely in a position to exploit its energy relationship with a major buyer like India in service of strategic aims. In other words, Riyadh can’t expect to gain much by threatening to cut off oil supplies if New Delhi doesn’t, say, end its partnership with Iran on the strategically important Chabahar port. It may take some time for India to adjust, and the risk of a short-term economic crunch may be problematic. But any leverage Riyadh has would be fleeting, as India eventually could just boost imports from a combination of Qatar, Nigeria and any number of other suppliers instead.
And for all the industry upheaval it has triggered, the shale revolution in the U.S. and elsewhere won’t change this dynamic. The introduction of a new major oil exporter – one that happens to be the world’s largest oil consumer, the protector of global sea lanes and a non-OPEC member, to boot – will only help ensure an environment of plentiful supply and unhindered flows across the global commons.
The Exceptions
There are several exceptions to the global bathtub where oil buyer-seller relationships are determined by factors beyond supply and demand – and, thus, where it can matter quite a bit geopolitically from where an importer gets its crude or to whom a producer is selling it. In these circumstances, dependencies are most likely to form, and an importing country’s desire for the lowest possible price of crude could take a back seat to its broader strategic interests.
When Buyers Lack Sellers
This dynamic typically involves landlocked countries that cannot easily draw from the global bathtub, tethering them to suppliers by train or pipeline (or to transit states through which the crude is transported). Belarus is one such example. In 2017, Belarus produced enough oil to meet only around one-fifth of its consumption. It purchased more than 99 percent of its crude imports, valued at $5.23 billion, from Russia but accounted for just 5.5 percent of Russian oil exports that year. There’s a clear dependency here – and one that Russia, which sees Belarus as indispensable to Russian security, has a strategic interest in leveraging. Indeed, the two are locked in a yearslong dispute over plans to remove discounts on Russian oil – re-exports of which account for nearly a third of Belarus’ export revenue – with Moscow occasionally sharply reducing oil flows to the country in an attempt to strongarm Minsk into compliance. The dispute may be motivated, at least in part, by Minsk’s occasional efforts to find some strategic balance between Russia and the West. Regardless, Belarus is in an uncomfortable position. On March 1, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced that the country was exploring alternative sources of oil, potentially via ports in Ukraine and the Baltics, though Minsk has made several such proclamations in the past.
Dependencies can also stem purely from geopolitical isolation. North Korea is the most prominent example. The U.N. sanctions implemented in 2016 have only deepened its near-total oil dependence on China and, to a much lesser extent, Russia. In the unlikely event that China deemed it worth the risk of pushing the North to the brink of collapse, it could impose a blanket embargo on oil exports to the Hermit Kingdom.
When Sellers Lack Buyers
The second exception typically occurs when geographic, economic and geopolitical conditions limit the number of buyers available to an exporter. This often involves situations where a country’s crude cannot be moved to port easily or cheaply, making producers more dependent on markets that can be served by pipelines or, less often, rail. Canada, for example, has to sell nearly all of its oil mined in its central provinces to the United States, creating a growing dependency on its mercurial southern neighbor. Geopolitical factors like sanctions can also restrict producers’ access to the global market and force them into dependencies. The most prominent example here is Iran, which has been forced to court buyers that are willing to buck U.S. pressure since oil sanctions were reimposed in November.
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