The EU facing the new energy challenge: crevasses to its performance as a single actor?

Abstract

The mid-2010s brought about a considerable realignment to the global energy landscape. Since then, the shale revolution has enabled the US to pursue a netexporter status, resulting in a continuous crude exports growth into Europe and Asia. Russia has been forced to cooperate with OPEC and create an “OPEC plus” schema, in order to react both to the meteoric fall of oil prices in 2015 and 2016 and to market share losses from the non-OPEC supply growth. China has started looking for an upgraded role in the international arena via a grid of bilateral and regional energy strategies. Brazil and India have also been pushed to engage in the energy play. The EU, during three crises, among such other crucial issues that tend to jeopardize its cohesion, as a sovereign debt crisis, the “Brexit” and the migration crisis, stays focused on the creation of an “Energy Union” and the pervasive implementation of the Third Energy Package policy. Yet, a tacit but severe debate emerges internally on a variety of relevant issues, such as shale technologies, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Norway’s hydrocarbons resources depletion. Focusing on latest energy developments, combined with political ones, the paper argues that the energy field could be another one challenge for the EU’s integration and its ability to act globally as a single actor.