The evolution of communities in the international oil trade network

Abstract

International oil trade is a subset of global trade and there exist oil trade communities. These communities evolve over time and provide clues of international oil trade patterns. A better understanding of the international oil trade patterns is necessary for governments in policy making. To study the evolution of trade communities in the international oil trade network, we set up unweighted and weighted oil trade network models based on complex network theory using data from 2002 to 2011. We detected the communities in the oil trade networks and analyzed their evolutionary properties and stabilities over time. We found that the unweighted and weighted international oil trade networks show many different features in terms of community number, community scale, distribution of countries, quality of partitions, and stability of communities. Two turning points occurred in the evolution of community stability in the international oil trade network. One is the year 2004–2005 which correlates with changes in demand and supply in the world oil market after the Iraq War, and the other is the year 2008–2009 which is connected to the 2008 financial crisis. Different causations of instability show different features and this should be considered by policy makers.