Daniel Yergin’s The New Map: Why Geopolitics Decide Who Wins in Oil & Gas
▦ OPINION | Arno Saffran, Wed 10 Sep, 2025 Daniel Yergin shows Oil & Gas bids are won by anticipating geopolitics, not price alone — placing leaders who align ambition with strategy.
The global energy order has been redrawn in the past decade. Daniel Yergin’s The New Map₁ traces how shifts in US shale, Russia’s eastward pivot, China’s Belt and Road strategy, Middle Eastern rivalries, and the accelerating energy transition have reshaped not just energy markets, but the very terrain on which commercial leaders must compete.
For those bidding in oil and gas, this isn’t theory — it’s the battlefield.
The US shale boom reset America’s leverage in supply, altering how bidders priced risk and opportunity.
Russia and China’s alignment turned pipelines into geopolitical instruments, rewarding those who understood strategy as well as engineering.
China’s Belt and Road transformed infrastructure into diplomacy, where access mattered more than spreadsheets.
The Middle East remains defined by rivalry and dependence, where in-country alliances determine who advances and who stalls.
The climate “maps” remind us the transition is real, but gradual. Oil and gas remain central, even as optics change.
Yergin’s lesson is consistent: the map matters, but only leaders who can read it — and act before others — will win.
That, in my view, is the overlooked truth of deal-making in this sector. Numbers don’t carry the day alone. It’s about who understands which levers to pull, which doors to open, and which risks can be navigated rather than avoided.
This is where people matter most. Not generic “talent,” but individuals trusted to operate at both the macro level of geopolitics and the micro level of an in-country tender. They turn the theory of The New Map into the reality of signed contracts.
At VSG, this is the ground we work on— the commercial leaders who convert shifting maps into winning bids. It’s not a process; it’s alignment. And in an industry defined by uncertainty, certainty of leadership is often the difference between a near miss and a secured deal.
References
The New Map, Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations. Daniel Yergin, Penguin Press 2020
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