Russia could have less influence on Western and Eastern Europe; Australia could be a major energy exporter as could America. Canada will have more exports. Unmentioned in this Stratfor article is that Israel could be a major energy player with offshore fields (perhaps because the article is about shale gas).
And then there is China:
China also has significant deposits of shale gas in its interior provinces. Because Beijing is burdened by relatively few regulations, the regime could acquire the land and build the infrastructure necessary for its exploitation. This would ease somewhat China's energy crunch and aid Beijing's strategy to compensate for the decline of its coastal-oriented economic model by spurring development inland.
The countries that might conceivably suffer on account of a shale gas revolution would be landlocked, politically unstable oil producers such as Chad, Sudan and South Sudan, whose hydrocarbons could become relatively less valuable as these other energy sources come online. China, especially, might in the future lose interest in the energy deposits in such low-end, high-risk countries if shale gas became plentiful in its own interior.
China is building a blue water navy that looks beyond Taiwan in no small part because they believe they need the power to protect long petroleum supply lines from Africa and the Middle East to China across the Indian Ocean, through Southeast Asian choke points, and through the contested South China Sea.
So as China invests in a blue water navy and as China loses the motivation to support unsavory energy exporters in Africa and the Middle East to ensure energy supplies no longer needed, where does that leave China's blue water navy?
China is a land power with many potential enemies around their land borders. It has been many centuries since China's naval power reached beyond their near shores. If China does not need a blue water navy, will China really devote the resources to build and sustain a large blue water navy over the long run?
Or will China pull back and build a blue water navy big enough to reduce their land and air power capabilities along their land borders without building a blue water fleet big enough to actually contest the blue waters far from China's shores? And as a bonus, lack the resources to be a dominant land power because they put too much into a navy also insufficient to be dominant?
Or maybe China will pull back at sea, focus their spending on land and air power suitable for land opponents while maintaining a navy sufficient to contest local waters against significant local threats and American forward forces, with only a small number of blue water forces suitable for peacetime engagement missions?
