Evolution of global fossil fuel trade dependencies

Abstract Trade relationships contribute greatly to energy security and trade efficiency, which are increasing vital in energy trade. Thus, trade relationships are worthy of further investigation, especially in relation to fossil fuels trade (including coal, crude oil, and natural gas), due to their high share of the global energy trade. To deeply reveal the trade relationships in fossil fuel trade, this paper contributes to investigate its dynamic dependencies. The point-wise mutual information method was applied to quantify fossil fuel trade dependencies, and the complex networks method was used to analyze the communities in the fossil fuel trade dependency network. The modeling results show that China and Japan had high trade dependencies with Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan in importing natural gas. There is great market space in South America region as for the USA's oil trade. Countries such as China, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Russian Federation, and Germany, which are leading members in each community, can play leadership roles in addressing the climate-trade dilemma. It is suggested that the leading countries in the communities play leadership roles and exert their great influence in the communities to address specific issues, such as solving the climate-trade dilemma.