The post Cold War world is appearing before our eyes as a pacified and productive universe, as soon as we remove our heads from the geostrategic conflicts in the Middle East or Southeast Asia (Indo-Pakistani tension and the struggle for hegemony in the China Sea in primis) and instead we turn to the new areas of the world still unexplored for energy purposes. Here the cooperation between the large national companies of the countries that own the reserves, on the one hand, which by now hold the vast majority of global oil and gas, and the companies of the Western world, which hold technological and financial knowledge to a much greater extent, on the other hand, it is the decisive lever for tackling the enormous problems – of research, safety, sustainability, profitability – which the whole world faces in order to guarantee its productive and social continuity.
The agreement between Exxon Mobil and Rosneft to explore and exploit the gigantic Kara Sea deposit in the Arctic goes precisely in this sense. Exxon Mobil, the company that often comes after the others, against, for example, the more agile BP, but which always does things well and better than the others (as recent history has confirmed, alas, giving full reason to the legends of us hardened oilmen), won a battle of the war that has just begun for the domination of the world's energy future. The great state powers act alongside the energy companies. The Arctic passage, moreover, with the progressive melting of large areas of ice, is increasingly strategic, not only for energy, but also for transport: movement of goods, black gold and blue gas combine in a new gigantic system innovation that has significant military and diplomatic implications.
It is no coincidence that the Chinese, through the illustrious figurehead of one of the new Tycons of the Communist Party, (“Huang Nubo, a real estate investor and former Chinese government official” – Financial Times August 30, 2011, p.1-), bought a huge area in Iceland to build (hear, hear!) a tourist resort… What a joke! Naturally China, once again, is not looking for cooperation, but for confrontation even in this field. It will be necessary to reverse this approach and, also in this sector, to convince the Chinese that cooperation is better than aggressive competition (fake, moreover). The Russians, for their part, will be able, thanks to the agreement, to drill in the Gulf of Mexico and Texas.
This is a serious and long-term pact (which enormously strengthens Putin), which aims at cooperation, integrating and not dividing economies and businesses. Naturally, the problems are enormous: the great engineering operation that has made it possible to repair the damage caused by the Louisiana oil spin will certainly provide all the capabilities, not to stem this time, but to avert the failures then caused by greed and the lack of corporate social responsibility of BP managers. In this deal, therefore, geostrategy, technology, transformation of contemporary enterprise all together are held in a crucial transformation that we must never lose sight of.
