The world energy market under geopolitical realities on the eve of 2017

Abstract

The article reviews the world energy market on the eve of 2017 embittered by the hardening geopolitical realities - social and war conflicts, information wars and the anti-Russian sanctions. The overproduction and the lack of market balancing by the OPEC leaders have been keeping the oil prices depressed for over two years. Russia’s government applied some initiatives to improve the situation at the end of 2016. As a result an agreement was signed by the OPEC countries as well as by 11 non-member exporters for cutting oil exports by almost 1,8 million bar\day (which corresponds to 1,9% of 2015 world oil production). Besides, thanks to investment operations «Rosneft » has gained a large-scale access to western technologies as well as to a rich oil deposit on the Egyptian shelf and to operations in oil facilities in India. The article considers China’s efforts to curb its coal production (about 48% of world indicators) and presents some statistics on international oil and gas trade.