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Energy trade and cooperation is a key field in the joint construction of the "Belt and Road Initiative". Carrying out a study on the evolution of the petroleum products trade network of countries along the "Belt and Road" (hereafter called the BRI countries) will help the BRI countries to strengthen cooperation in petroleum products trade. Taking petroleum products as the research object, this paper used the complex network method to analyze the dynamic evolution of the petroleum products trade network of the BRI countries since the 21st century and revealed the similarities and differences between the petroleum products trade network and the crude oil trade network through comparison. The results show that: (1)The petroleum products trade network is a small world network with core-periphery structure, which presents the characteristics of scale expansion, tightness increase and increasingly complex, and these characteristics are more significant than the crude oil trade network; (2)The spatial imbalance of petroleum products trade is significant, the petroleum trade forms a spatial pattern of radiation from hub nodes such as Singapore, Russia and Saudi Arabia, and convergence to hub nodes such as Singapore, China and Malaysia, and the status of hub nodes is increasingly strengthened; (3)The communities of the products trade network gradually gather. The petroleum products trade network gradually forms three stable communities with Russia, Singapore and the Middle East countries as the cores. China gradually separates from Russia's community and join Singapore's community. Finally, corresponding policy implications are provided based on the research results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper endeavours to explore and analyse some critical issues in the oil and gas market that cropped up around the spread of COVID-19 and tries to identify the key drivers and triggers pertaining therewith. The spread of the first wave that began in March 2020 is crucial because of the global economic downturn that ensued due to lockdown and imposed restrictions coupled with a protracted oil price war that began between Saudi Arabia and Russia. The paper tries to address some key research questions to understand the triggers and drivers around the pandemic. These are: (1) whether the behaviour of OPEC or its key players around the pandemic could be considered uniquely different; (2) what could the triggers be for the increased volatilities that cropped up in both physical and financial markets during the pandemic; (3) what was really different about the oil market crisis around the pandemic that transformed it to an unprecedented storage crisis; (4) what really went wrong with the much-hyped U.S. shale boom during the pandemic that led to the bankruptcy of several oil and gas companies, followed by huge job losses. The paper relies on a structured review of relevant secondary literature to address these exploratory questions and builds upon a retrospective rumination on the world oil market from 1960 to 2020. This is complemented by an analysis of supporting data and evidence obtained from various sources. Considering the intertwining of oil and financial markets around the pandemic, the lessons and findings from the paper would not only be highly relevant for policymakers and stakeholders in the oil and gas sector but would be equally relevant for those in the financial markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to ensure the safe operation of road engineering in the Daxing'an Mountains permafrost area, this paper selected the permafrost environment, natural environment and engineering measures from a large number of influencing factors to establish an evaluation set and determine the grade standard of evaluation indexes. Based on the membership degree theory of fuzzy mathematics, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model of subgrade in permafrost area was established. Based on the monitoring data of the typical subgrade of the accompanying road in the permafrost area of the Mohe -Daqing line of China Russia crude oil pipeline in Daxing 'an Mountains area, the results of the evaluation model were verified and analyzed. The results showed that the model evaluation results were highly consistent with the actual road subgrade diseases. The evaluation method can be applied to the thermal stability evaluation of frozen soil subgrade, and has certain practicality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the many papers published on oilfield ecosystems, there is a lack of data about microbial community structure and functioning in many crude oils or oilfields and wells. One of such poorly studied oilfields is supergiant Romashkino situated in Tatarstan (Russia). In the present study, prokaryotic community composition and abundance of functional genes encoding sulfate reduction and rhamnolipid production, was investigated in enrichment cultures of four samples from Romashkino oilfield production wells with different oil/water ratios. The enrichment was conducted under anaerobic conditions, sulfate and nitrate were used as electron acceptors, and acetate – as an electron donor. In enrichment culture A and enrichment culture B, bacteria of the Pseudomonadaceae family predominated with 99% and 93% relative abundance, respectively. In enrichment culture C (obtained on the basis of initial sample contained oil with medium water content) and D (obtained on the basis of initial sample contained oil with very high water content), Pseudomonadaceae were one of the two predominating families, along with Micrococcaceae (enrichment culture C) and Dietziaceae (enrichment culture D). The proportion of dsrA and apsA genes encoding sulfate reduction to 16S rRNA gene copy numbers was quite low and ranged between 0.003% (enrichment cultures A, B) and 0.027% (enrichment culture D). The proportion of rhlB gene encoding rhamnolipid production from the total 16S rRNA gene copy number was 1.10% in sample A and 0.06% in sample B. In enrichment cultures C and D the rhlB gene was not found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by large oil price swings, high economic and geopolitical uncertainties, and the financialization of oil, this paper examines the frequency spillovers and co-movements between oil shocks (risk and demand) and the stock markets of top oil-producer and consumer countries, namely, Canada, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the US. The analysis uses the time-domain spillover index of [1], the frequency-domain spillover of [2]; and the wavelet coherence approach. The findings reveal that spillovers run from the U.S., Canada, and, to a lesser extent, Russia to oil shocks. On the other hand, oil shocks, Saudi Arabia, and China constitute net receivers of shocks. The intensity of spillovers is heavier in the short-term frequency than in the intermediate- and long-term. Furthermore, the direction of spillovers is more defined in the long-term. The U.S. stock market exerts a strong impact on oil risk in general, but the impact is stronger in the short-term. Conversely, an oil demand shock is susceptible to innovations from Canada and Russia that are stronger in the long-term. This means that oil risk shock stemming from innovations in financial markets is short-lived and dissipates quickly due to quick reactions from market participants. On the contrary, long-term links characterize the relationship between oil demand shock and financial markets, mirroring the macroeconomic nature of the linkages. Finally, while the 2008 crisis, EDC, oil price crash, and the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with strong spillovers in the short-term, the COVID-19 era was marked by higher spillovers in the long term. The findings provide important information for investors and policymakers in terms of diversification, risk management, and efforts to mitigate contagion. • This paper examines the frequency spillovers and co-movements between oil shocks and the stock markets. • We use the time-frequency spillover index method and the wavelet coherence approach. • Spillovers run from the U.S., Canada, and, to a lesser extent, Russia to oil shocks. • Oil shocks, Saudi Arabia, and China constitute net receivers of shocks. • The intensity of spillovers is heavier in the short-term frequency than in the intermediate- and long-term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural gas has returned to prominence in the agenda of European countries since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. However, natural gas is a fossil source with severe environmental implications. This paper aims to verify the impact of natural gas on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for a European panel from 1993 to 2018 for sixteen countries. An Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model in the form of an unrestricted error correction model was used to identify the short-run impacts, the long-run elasticities, and the speed of adjustment of the model. The results indicate that in the short-run, natural gas has a negligible impact on CO2 emissions when faced with oil consumption (6.7 times less), whereas the consumption of renewables and hydroelectric energy proved to be able to decrease the CO2 emissions both in the short- and long-run. The elasticity of oil consumption is lower than the unit, indicating that efficiency gains have been achieved during the process of the energy transition to clean energy sources. If economies use non-renewable energy, governments must continue to prefer natural gas to oil. Renewables and hydroelectric consumption must be used to revert the path of CO2 emissions. Given the unstable scenario that has been caused by the War in Eastern Europe, politicians should focus on accelerating the transition from fossil to renewable energies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is the first to employ a quantile vector autoregression (QVAR) to identify the connectedness between geopolitical risks and energy volatility from January 1, 2015, to April 03, 2023. This paper is also the first to examine the mediating roles of uncertain events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict on this interlinkage. Dynamic connectedness is 29% in the short term and approximately 6% in the long term. Dynamic net total directional connectedness over a quantile also indicates that connectedness is very intense for both highly positive changes (above the 80% quantile) and negative changes (below the 20% quantile). In the short term, the geopolitical risks remained net receivers of shock, but they turned into net shock transmitters during 2020 in the long term. Clean energy, in the short term, transmits shocks to other markets, and it plays the same role in the long term. Crude oil was a net receiver of shocks during COVID-19 and turned into a net transmitter of shocks in early 2022. Dynamic net pairwise directional connectedness over a quantile suggests that uncertain events like the COVID-19 epidemic or the Russia-Ukraine conflict influence the dynamic interlinkages between geopolitical risks and renewable energy volatility and change their roles in the designed system. These findings are critical since they help authorities develop effective policies to lessen the vulnerabilities of these indicators and minimize how widely the renewable and non-renewable energy market is exposed to risk or uncertainty. • We use a QVAR to identify the connectedness between renewable energy dynamics and geopolitical risk. • Dynamic connectedness influenced by short-duration and long-duration is 29% and 6%. • Geopolitical risks change from a net receiver in the short term to a net transmitter in the long term. • COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine-Russia aturn geopolitical risks into a net shock transmitter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the dynamic relationships between the crude oil price (COP) and the unemployment rate (UR) in Russia and Canada with a bootstrap subsample rolling-window causality test. This approach relaxes linear assumptions, fully considers structural breaks, and captures time-varying causalities between variables; thus, it performs better than traditional long-run causality tests. The empirical results indicate that there are dynamic causal links between the COP and the UR in certain subsample intervals, which does not fully support Carruth's model. Furthermore, the causality between the COP and the UR in Russia can be described based on Western sanctions, China-Russia energy cooperation and the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, a decrease in major oil companies' production and the development of U.S. shale oil are employed to explain the fluctuating relationship between the COP and the UR in Canada. Our study identifies potential heterogeneous reasons for the dynamic causalities of major exporting countries, and it reveals novel influencing mechanisms between these two variables. Thus, some policies are suggested to alleviate shocks from oil prices, including oil risk management and oil cooperation for Russia and oil export structural adjustments and monitoring mechanism establishment for Canada. • Both parameter stability and sub-sample rolling-window causality tests are utilized in this paper. • The time-varying causal relationship between crude oil price and unemployment rate is discovered. • Heterogeneous explanations and policy responses are provided for Canada and Russia respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In permafrost regions, the soil settlement disaster owing to permafrost degradation has become one of the important reasons for buried warm-oil pipelines failure. In this paper, the 3D sequential thermo-mechanical coupled model is carried out to investigate the interaction between buried warm-oil pipeline and surrounding permafrost. The effects of parameters, including thaw-settlement coefficient, length of transition zone, diameter-thickness ratio and internal pressure, on the pipeline mechanical behavior are numerically investigated. Among them, the thaw-settlement coefficient and length of transition zone present more significant effects on the peak strain of the pipeline. In addition, the effects of insulation layer and two-phase closed thermosyphon (TPCT) on pipeline–soil interaction are investigated in thermal and mechanical fields. With no protective measure, the permafrost layer under pipeline will completely degrade in about 20 years with 0.33m/a. The pipeline is considered to reach failure limitation even within 10 years. However, under the influence of combined measure, the permafrost degradation rate is only about 1/10 of that without protective measure. The peak compressive strain is significantly lower than the critical compressive strain, and the pipeline remains safe for 50 years. Therefore, the combined measure is an ideal method for ensuring pipeline safety in permafrost regions. • Permafrost layer is well protected by the combined measure. • The TSC and the LTZ show significant effects on the peak strain of pipeline. • Pipeline remains safe for 50 years under the influence of combined measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of oil fields by the most common waterflooding method leads to an increase in the water cut of the recoverable oil and a low oil recovery factor (for Russia, about 30–40%). The solution to this actual problem seems to be in the combination of the applied waterflooding method with the elastic wave action. This paper presents the results of the use of acoustic stimulation as an unconventional but promising approach to enhanced oil recovery. This study developed a borehole emitter and acoustic action technology to stimulate oil production. In this borehole hydrodynamic emitter, based on the jet-driven Helmholtz oscillator, the generation of intense acoustic pressure oscillations occurs due to the energy of the fluid flow injected into the formation. Bench tests made it possible to determine the operating parameters and frequency characteristics of the device. Field tests were carried out in Russia at an oil field that is in a late stage of development. An increase in oil production has been achieved; the water cut of the produced oil has been reduced; the injectivity of the injection well has been increased due to the restoration of the filtration properties of the bottom-hole zone. Thus, the developed technical devices, operating at kilohertz frequencies, and the production technology can be used as a promising method for stimulating oil flow and enhancing oil recovery. The advantages of the proposed acoustic treatment are their relatively low cost, simplicity of device design, high efficiency, and environmental friendliness, as well as the possibility of combining this technology with almost all traditional methods of enhanced oil recovery. • Borehole emitter and acoustic technology to stimulate oil production are developed. • Sound oscillations increase the well injectivity with contaminated bottom-hole zone. • Average increase in the oil production rate is 1.68 tons per day (11.8%). • The advantages - small-size equipment, ecologically safe and low operating costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]