A comparison of oil supply risks in EU, US, Japan, China and India under different climate scenarios

Abstract

For many countries, the inflow of energy is essential to keep economies running. Oil is typically considered to be the most critical fuel as an input for the petro-chemical and transportation sector and due to limited and less spread reserves. In this study external oil supply risks are assessed for the period up to 2035 for the European Union, United States, China, Japan and India (being the five largest importers of oil in the world), based on their current supplier portfolio. Scenarios are constructed for several climate policy and oil-supply projections.It is found that risks increase strongly, when stringent climate policies are prevented from being implemented, especially when a peak in oil supply is taken into account, resulting in major oil supply-disruptions. China faces the lowest oil supply risks in most scenarios but the trends of India, China and US converge over time due to increasing import dependency of China and India. Japan faces high risks since the country has the highest oil import dependency combined with a low oil import diversification. For the EU, all figures are strongly influenced by Russia, accounting for 32% of total imports, and to a lesser extent Norway (11%), with high overall risks.