The New Prize? The Impact of Petroleum Innovation and Technology on the Global Energy Security Paradigm

Challenging Klare’s resource scarcity thesis of ‘the race for what’s left’, this paper asserts that innovation and technological development, coupled with geology and climate are creating a new energy paradigm, since petroleum resources previously unable to be accessed are now being accessed and produced. This production of previously inaccessible petroleum, particularly shale oil and gas in the USA, and petroleum located in the Arctic, is challenging the existing energy paradigm where the Middle East is the major producer of petroleum, and the major consumers are developed states such as the US. This paper demonstrates that a new energy security paradigm is being shaped by technological developments and new applications of existing technologies, examining how the innovative application of existing technologies enabled shale oil and gas to be produced. It also analyses how newly developed Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) technology for gas extraction in the warm waters in north western Australia may play a pivotal role in the exploitation and production and transportation of Arctic Petroleum, especially in the Russian sector of the Arctic, thereby challenging the traditional energy security paradigm.