From OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) to OMEC (Organization of Mineral Exporting Countries). The baton of global critical resource competition is in the process of being passed.
In March 2021, the global leaders of Climate Change, Decarbonization, Mining, and Metals for KPMG along with The Eurasia Group think tank issued an important 14-page executive summary on “Resourcing the Energy Transition: Making the World Go Round.”
From OPEC to ‘OMEC’: the new global energy ecosystem -
An energy transition is occurring that relies upon new sources of power and will drastically redraw the global energy and minerals market – with economic, environmental and geopolitical consequences.
https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/cr/pdf/resourcing-the-e…
More recently, in the midst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and based upon the risks and issues highlighted in the KPMG/Eurasia monograph, energy writer Tsvetana Paraskova published an essay asserting that geopolitical maps are now being re-written by the green energy battery manufacturing boom.
She points out how batteries, renewables, and transport introduce a whole new set of geopolitical issues, alignments, rivalries, and alliances that are analogous to the volatile dynamics of petroleum states.
The following linked excerpt invites further review - especially given the fact that Russia, China, and their allies and client states may be at odds with the resource needs of Europe, the US, our allies and client states:
Countries that aren’t Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran hold vast resources of the metals and minerals that will be critical to enabling a faster energy transition. But those resource holders also include Russia, China, and a host of African and South American nations still living “the resource curse”, where conflict, forced and child labor, and critically low environmental standards are undermining the “green” credentials of the clean energy transition.
As developed economies look to lessen their dependence on fossil fuels and, by extension, on the political goals and whims of major oil and gas resource holders such as Russia and the members of OPEC, the geopolitical influence of the petrostates would likely wane over time. But a new geopolitical issue would rise—potential dependence on countries holding resources of critical minerals. And those countries include the likes of China and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example.
https://oilprice.com/Metals/Commodities/The-Battery-Boom-Wil…
Vladimir Putin is currently leveraging Russia’s petroleum exports to Europe and his military in Ukraine to disrupt global fuel and grain supplies in an effort to expand his power and control. He not only wields petroleum and wheat as weapons, but he also possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
Xi Jinping is similarly leveraging China’s rare earth minerals and relationships with resource nations through its Belt and Road Initiative, financing projects from Asia to Africa, including many of the world’s poorest nations. He not only controls mineral and export highways on land and sea, he also possesses the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal.
Given the growing dependence of the US and Europe upon mineral wealth controlled by Russia and China, and further given “deep alliances” between Russia and China - increased as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems the US and Europe ought to be seriously adjusting their approach to Russia and China during the Ukraine conflict.
Peaceful relations with mineral resource exporting countries will be key to moving the world quickly away from dependence upon petroleum products toward renewable energy on a broad global scale.