International fossil fuel strategies

The international community is experiencing mounting anxiety on the energy market. Gas and oil are becoming scarcer, while demand is escalating. The supply question is now an enduring and dominant feature on the geopolitical scene, and stabilizing the oil price has become an economic necessity. These conflicts of interest have a tendency to intensify divisions between national economies that are already engaged in an acrimonious commercial power struggle. The resultant challenges that face the major industrial powers, whether established or emergent, have encouraged the adoption of competing strategies in Russia, China, India and the United States, while new opportunities are emerging for nuclear energy. (author)