Making a Global Gas Market: Territoriality and Production Networks in Liquefied Natural Gas

Abstract

Energy markets are an important contemporary site of economic globalization. In this article we use a global production network (GPN) approach to examine the evolutionary dynamics of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector and its role in an emerging global market for natural gas. We extend recent work in the relational economic geography literature on the organizational practices by which production networks are assembled and sustained over time and space; and we address a significantly underdeveloped aspect of GPN research by demonstrating the implications of these practices for the territoriality of GPNs. The article introduces LNG as a technomaterial reconfiguration of natural gas that enables it to be moved and sold beyond the continental limits of pipelines. We briefly outline the evolving scale and geographic scope of LNG trade, and introduce the network of firms, extraeconomic actors, and intermediaries through which LNG production, distribution, and marketing are coordinated. Our analysis shows how LNG is evolving from a relatively simple floating pipeline model of point-topoint, binational flows orchestrated by producing and consuming companies and governed by longterm contracts, to a more geographic and organizationally complex production network that is constitutive of an emergent global gas market. Empirically the article provides the first systematic analysis within economic geography of the globalization of the LNG sector and its influence on global gas markets, demonstrating the potential of GPN (and related frameworks) to contribute meaningful analysis of the contemporary political economy of energy. Conceptually the article pushes research on GPN to realize more fully its potential as an analysis of network territoriality by examining how the spatial configuration of GPNs emerges from the organizational structures and coordinating strategies of firms, extraeconomic actors and intermediaries; and by recognizing how network territoriality is constitutive of markets rather than merely responsive to them.

Understanding the spatial unevenness of regional renewable energy deployment: insights for policy design

“…This approach builds upon the analysis of materiality originally developed for the extractive industries, including fossil fuels (Bakker and Bridge, 2006;Kaup, 2008;Kaup, 2014;Bridge and Bradshaw, 2017) and discussed in relation to RE in De Laurentis and Pearson (2018). The deployment of RE, the process of turning renewable 'natural resources' into viable forms of energy through stages of energy conversion, storage, transmission and distribution has material aspects like those involved in fossil fuel deployment.…”

Understanding the material dimensions of the uneven deployment of renewable energy in two Italian regions

“…Moreover, Bridge (2008) (see also Bridge and Bradshaw (2017)) has also drawn attention to the materiality of production networks. Using the example of the oil industry, Bridge highlights the influence that materiality exerts on industrial organisations within it.…”

“…This section has discussed the dimensions of materiality, as addressed by Bakker and Bridge (2006); Bridge and Bradshaw (2017); Kaup (2008Kaup ( , 2014, and applied in the fossil fuels geography literature and we argue that some of these material dimensions are also relevant to forms of RE. This section has shown also how these material dimensions offer a way of acknowledging resources in dialectical terms -a socio-natural phenomenon that takes shape and form through interaction between the material/ physical world and specific activities, Italian regions.…”

Finland’s Dependence on Russian Energy—Mutually Beneficial Trade Relations or an Energy Security Threat?

“…For instance, price-setting [49] by producer countries or individual companies are strategies enabling governance or the spread of influence 'at a distance' [50] or 'co-optation' [51], i.e., seductive or covert use of power. Strategies of energy transition (i.e., aims to achieve a low-carbon energy system by increasing renewable energy production and energy efficiency), as well as the introduction of shale oil, and shale gas, as well as liquefied natural gas (LNG) into the global energy market [52] can bring about a significant shift.…”

“…The global production network for LNG has more than doubled between 2002 and 2015. Furthermore, establishing a new kind of pricing regime that could reduce the power of traditional long-term contracts is equally important [52].…”