The New Map

July 13, 2020
In this sprawling geopolitical survey, Pulitzer-winning energy historian Yergin (The Prize) explores upheavals in energy supplies and international relations. The boom in fracked oil and natural gas, he notes, has made America once again the planet’s leading energy producer and a major exporter. Meanwhile, Russia is trying to use gas exports to strong-arm Ukraine and Western Europe and shore up its clout; China is building pipelines abroad to import fuels; and OPEC’s oil-exporting economies are struggling with falling prices and a global glut of crude. Looking ahead, Yergin sees evolution in energy markets because of electric vehicles, driverless cars, and ride-hailing apps, and cites studies predicting that demand for oil will stop rising in the 2030s and be followed not by a “plummet” but by ”a gradual decline on a downward-sloping plateau.” Yergin provides a lucid, judicious overview of global energy and its discontents, with colorful though not always relevant historical background. But there’s not much new, and the basic picture is of a world where energy is abundant, cheap, widely available, and therefore not a coveted prize. The result is a well-informed yet surprisingly ho-hum rundown of how energy issues affect world affairs. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME.

Starred review from July 15, 2020
The latest on global energy geopolitics from the pen of an expert. Yergin is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of multiple magisterial volumes on world affairs as they relate to energy. In The Quest (2011), he described the stormy rivalry between an America struggling to maintain its hegemony in the face of upcoming rivals Russia and China. The following decade has not improved matters, and the current global pandemic is proving to be a disaster. However, bad news often makes for entertaining reading, and Yergin delivers a fascinating and meticulously researched page-turner. He maintains that an energy revolution has transformed the world to America's benefit. However, it's not wind and solar but fracking. American oil production had been dropping since 1970, but after 2000, fracking changed the game. In 2018, the U.S. overtook Russia and Saudi Arabia to again become the world's largest oil producer. Production tripled between 2008 and 2020. Yergin astutely examines how other nations responded. Russia, with an economy "only slightly larger than Spain's," depends on oil income as much as the old Soviet Union. Responding to American oil sanctions, Putin has vastly improved relations with China, by many measures the world's leading economy. "China," writes the author, "has become what Britain had been during the industrial revolution--the manufacturing 'workshop of the world.' " It's already the largest producer of steel, aluminum, and computers as well as the largest energy consumer. Turning to the Middle East, Yergin describes an unhappy collection of failed states, civil wars, oppressive theocracies, bloody insurgencies, and wealthy ministates, all dealing with plummeting oil prices. The author views Trump with the same mild disapproval he applies to Putin and China's Xi Jinping, and he chastises environmentalists for getting certain facts wrong. Yergin accepts that humans have dramatically affected the climate, but he doubts the practicality of proposed solutions. Required reading. Another winner from a master.

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