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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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The New Map summary
Daniel Yergin
Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations
18 mins
Brief summary
The New Map by Daniel Yergin examines the shifting geopolitical landscape driven by energy developments. It provides insights into how these changes impact global power dynamics and the future of energy security and innovation.
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The New Map
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The American shale oil revolution
In the depths of the Great Depression, a Greek immigrant’s son named George Mitchell watched his parents struggle to keep their shoeshine business afloat. This early hardship sparked an entrepreneurial drive that would later revolutionize American energy. Mitchell became fascinated by natural gas and spent decades perfecting hydraulic fracturing techniques to release gas trapped in shale rock formations.
Unlike coal, which forms in relatively accessible layers, shale gas and oil are trapped within dense rock formations deep underground. Mitchell’s breakthrough came through combining horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing – pumping water, sand, and chemicals into wells to crack the rock. Early versions were limited and expensive. This led to pessimistic projections about America’s natural gas future in the 2000s when the US was preparing to become a major gas importer from Qatar and other producers.
Instead, advances in fracking technology unleashed an unprecedented boom. Gas production soared in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale and Texas’s Barnett Shale. Then came an even bigger discovery: these same techniques could extract oil. New energy hotspots emerged in North Dakota’s Bakken formation and Texas’s Eagle Ford Shale, transforming sleepy towns into boomtowns. The economic ripple effects transformed American manufacturing. By 2015, industrial electricity prices in the US were 30 to 50 percent lower than in Europe and Asia.
The environmental and social costs sparked intense debate. The Keystone XL Pipeline controversy began in 2008 when TransCanada proposed a 1,179-mile pipeline to carry Alberta tar sands oil to Nebraska. At Standing Rock in 2016, thousands of protesters, led by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, camped for months to protect their water sources from the Dakota Access Pipeline, drawing global attention to fracking’s broader impacts.
Geopolitically, US shale transformed global energy dynamics. Russia’s gas leverage over Europe weakened as US natural gas supplied countries from Poland to Lithuania. Saudi Arabia responded by flooding the market with oil in 2014 and 2020, attempting to make American shale unprofitable. This contributed to regional tensions, as oil-dependent economies like Iran and Venezuela faced severe economic pressure from lower prices.
The shale revolution reveals an important truth: energy innovation redraws the map of global power. As nations race to control the next energy transformation, the lessons of this American story will only become more relevant.
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What is The New Map about?
The New Map (2020) illustrates how global power dynamics are being reshaped by the convergence of energy politics, climate change, and international conflicts, particularly between the US, China, Russia, and the Middle East. It analyzes how America’s shale, Russia’s vast gas reserves, China’s growing influence, the Middle East’s adaptation to falling oil prices, and innovations in green tech and renewables are redrawing the world's energy map.
Who should read The New Map?
- Politics junkies ready for insights into how energy shapes geopolitics
- Climate activists who want a global snapshot of energy dynamics
- Investors looking for risks and opportunities in the energy sector
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