3.2.5.2 - Resource patterns, trade and geopolitics

Energy production, use and movement

Production geography reflects resources and investment, while consumption reflects population, income, industry and the energy services people need.

Coal, oil and gas are concentrated in suitable geological basins. Solar and wind opportunities vary with climate; hydropower needs water and relief. Extraction still depends on finance, technology, infrastructure and permission. Large consumers can also be large producers: domestic production does not by itself show an export surplus.

EIA's India brief identifies China, the United States and India as the three largest energy consumers in 2023. Its Table 1 gives India primary-energy production of 21.5 QBTU and consumption of 36.2 QBTU in that year. The difference, 14.7 QBTU from those rounded values, indicates the scale of the production–use mismatch, but is not itself an exact net-import figure: balances also include stocks and other accounting terms. EIA India, updated 6 February 2025.

Resources move as pipeline gas, tanker oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG), shipped coal, or electricity through interconnected grids. LNG is cooled gas transported by specialised vessels and returned to gas at a receiving terminal. EIA reports the United States as the largest LNG exporter in 2024, with Australia and Qatar the next two; this is a ranking of this particular traded fuel, not all energy. Its US destination account identifies both European and Asian markets. EIA, 27 March 2025.

Read a flow map through origin, destination, variable, year and unit. Proportional flow arrows encode quantity through a defined width scale. A route may be schematic rather than an actual shipping track. An arrow without a numerical scale supports direction, not a tonnage estimate. Distinguish gross exports from exports minus imports, and fuel volume from energy content. One fuel flow cannot represent a country's entire energy balance.

Copper and water patterns

Copper and water show different ways in which uneven availability connects to distant demand.

Copper is a non-ferrous metal used in electrical and construction systems. Its ore is mined where geological deposits can be worked. Concentrates, intermediate products and refined metal can cross borders at different processing stages, so mining, refining and final manufacturing need not occur in the same country.

The ICSG Factbook's 2024 trade diagrams identify Chile and Peru among major ores/concentrates exporters and China and Japan among major importers. Separate diagrams show blister/anodes and refined copper. They disclose no calibrated mass scale or numerical flow values: use their named patterns qualitatively. A concentrate quantity is not automatically its contained copper quantity. ICSG Factbook 2025, printed pp 29–31.

In the separately dated September 2026 ICSG Table 2, 2024 world mine production is 22,955.0 thousand metric tonnes copper and refined usage is 27,419.9 thousand tonnes copper. Refinery output and usage include routes involving secondary material and inventories; these different stages do not prove a mine-production “shortfall” of the subtraction. Compare equivalent stages before making a balance claim. ICSG Table 2.