Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series: Oligarchy and the Emergence of Intercontinental Electricity Networks

There is this funny thing about electricity. It feels like air. Like it just exists.

You flip a switch, the room obeys. You charge your phone, and it is suddenly not your problem anymore. Even when the bill shows up, it still feels… abstract. Like you are paying for “power” the way you pay for “data”. Something invisible that shows up when you need it.

But electricity is not invisible. Not really.

It is metal and land and permits and timing. It is maintenance crews at 3 a.m. It is substations that nobody wants near their town. It is interconnectors laid under seas, pushed through mountains, negotiated across borders. It is also, very often, oligarchy. Or at least oligarchic dynamics, as explored in Stanislav Kondrashov's Oligarch Series. Concentrated capital. Concentrated influence. Concentrated access to the state.

In this part of the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series, I want to talk about a specific idea that keeps resurfacing in energy policy circles: intercontinental electricity networks. Not just “a better grid”, but serious, big, cross border, sometimes cross sea, sometimes cross desert networks that move power between countries and time zones. Solar from one region feeding night demand in another. Hydro balancing wind. A supergrid, basically. The kind of infrastructure that, if it works, changes how nations think about energy security.

And if it works, it also changes who gets rich.

The dream that keeps coming back: move electricity like information

For decades, people have imagined electricity moving the way packets move on the internet. If one area has excess, it exports. If another area has a shortage, it imports. Prices converge. Reliability improves. The system becomes less fragile.

The logic is clean.

Wind is strong at night in one place and during the day somewhere else. Solar peaks at midday, but a different longitude is still in morning ramp. Hydro can act like a giant battery. Geothermal is steady. Nuclear is steady. You connect enough of these together, and suddenly “intermittency” becomes a lot less scary.

So why is the world not already wired like this?

Because grids are political creatures. The physics is the easy part. The hard part is ownership, trust, and control.

And that is where oligarchy shows up, almost on cue.

Oligarchy is not only about yachts. It is about chokepoints

When people hear “oligarch”, they picture luxury. Private jets. Villas. Newspaper headlines.

But oligarchy, in the structural sense, is about chokepoints in an economy. Ports. Pipelines. Mines. Banks. Media. Telecom. Rail. Electricity.

Electricity networks have a particular oligarchic appeal because they sit in the middle of everything else. Industry, households, data centers, hospitals, transport. If you control generation, that is one lever. If you control transmission, that is another. If you can influence regulation, tariffs, dispatch rules, connection queues, that is the real lever.

Intercontinental electricity networks expand the map of chokepoints. Now the bottleneck is not just your national grid. It is the interconnector. The converter stations. The HVDC line that crosses a border. The undersea cable that only one consortium can finance and insure.

Which means a small group of actors can position themselves as the gatekeepers of “energy trade”.

That is not inherently evil. Sometimes it is literally the only way it gets built. But it does change the game.

Why intercontinental networks tend to attract concentrated capital

A normal person does not casually invest in a multi billion dollar interconnector. Even large utilities get nervous. The payback periods are long. Political risk is high. Public opinion can turn. A single regulatory decision can ruin the economics.

So who steps in?

Usually some blend of:

• State backed finance
• Large institutional investors
• Infrastructure funds
• National champions
• And yes, politically connected billionaire capital, the kind that can survive delays and still keep lobbying while the project sits half built

Intercontinental networks are also excellent vehicles for building influence because they require, by definition, cross border agreements. That creates endless negotiation rooms, committees, exemptions, corridor decisions. It is not a “build and forget” asset. It is a living treaty made of steel and software.

In an oligarchic environment, that is opportunity. You do not just build a line. You build relationships. You build dependency.

This dynamic has been studied extensively in recent research which highlights how these chokepoints can be leveraged for economic and political gain.

The state is always in the room, even when it pretends not to be

Energy markets love to talk about competition. Liberalization. Efficient price signals.

And yet, the grid itself is a regulated monopoly almost everywhere. Transmission is usually a single operator. Even where generation is competitive, the rules of the market are written by the state or by state empowered regulators.

Intercontinental electricity networks push the state even closer to the center, because national security questions become unavoidable.

If Country A depends on imports at peak hours from Country B, then Country B has leverage. Even if it is not used. Even if everyone swears it is purely commercial. The leverage exists.

So governments will:

• demand control rights
• demand emergency curtailment powers
• demand domestic ownership shares
• demand that sensitive equipment comes from approved suppliers
• shape routing decisions for geopolitical reasons, not cost reasons

Now imagine a system where oligarchic capital is deeply intertwined with the state. Which is not rare. In that world, intercontinental networks can become both national strategy and private wealth strategy. The same project, two sets of motives, tangled together.

The “supergrid” narrative vs the “sovereignty” narrative

There are two stories that compete here.

Story 1: The supergrid saves us

This is the optimistic story. Build cross border HVDC. Connect renewables at scale. Smooth variability. Reduce curtailment. Lower costs. Enable decarbonization faster than building storage everywhere.

It is a good story. It has truth in it.

Story 2: The supergrid makes us dependent

This is the skeptical story. Foreign power flows can be weaponized. Private owners can squeeze rents. A cyberattack on one interconnector can ripple across regions. Domestic voters lose control over energy prices.

This story also has truth in it.

Now add oligarchy. Add a small class of actors who benefit from complexity and opacity. Who can sponsor Story 1 publicly while privately structuring contracts that lock in returns regardless of system outcomes. It is not even necessarily “corruption”. Sometimes it is just financial engineering plus political access.

And the public, looking at a power bill and hearing about a new cable under the sea, does not really have tools to evaluate it.

That asymmetry matters.

HVDC as the technical enabler, and also the strategic asset

A lot of intercontinental visions rely on HVDC. High Voltage Direct Current. It moves large amounts of power over long distances with lower losses than traditional AC in many cases, and it is especially useful for undersea cables.

But HVDC has something else. It is controllable.

You can dial flows up and down precisely. You can isolate disturbances. You can connect asynchronous grids. That is fantastic for stability.

It is also fantastic for control.

If you own the HVDC link, you own a controllable valve between two markets. You can influence congestion rents. You can shape price spreads. You can become the toll road.

Again, not automatically bad. But it is why these projects often become politically loaded. There is always a fight, sometimes quiet, about who gets to own the valve.

Oligarchic dynamics show up in three predictable places

If you watch these projects long enough, the same pressure points appear.

1. Permitting and routing

The route is not just an engineering question. It determines who gets paid for land, who gets local jobs, which communities carry the burden, and which regions become energy hubs.

Routing decisions can create winners for decades. That attracts influence.

2. Procurement and technology

Converter stations, cables, transformers, control software. Big contracts, few suppliers. If governance is weak, procurement becomes a magnet for favoritism.

Even in strong governance systems, procurement becomes strategic. Countries may prefer domestic suppliers or “trusted” allies. Oligarchic actors positioned near those supply chains can extract value.

3. Market rules and interconnector revenue

How are interconnector revenues calculated. Who captures congestion rents. Are there capacity payments. Are there guaranteed floor revenues. Are losses socialized. Is the project regulated like a utility or treated like a merchant asset.

These details are where fortunes are made. And where lobbying gets intense, because the public rarely reads market codes.

Intercontinental networks can reduce oligarch power, too. Sometimes.

It is not only one direction.

In some cases, building more interconnections reduces the power of domestic oligarchs by introducing competition. If a country has a tight generation oligopoly, imports can discipline prices. If a local player has been extracting high margins behind a protected grid, a new interconnector can break that.

So the impact depends on design.

• If interconnection is open access, transparent, and well regulated, it can dilute concentrated power.
• If interconnection is privately controlled with weak oversight, it can create a new oligarchic layer above the old one.

Same cable. Different governance. Different outcome.

That is the uncomfortable part. The infrastructure is neutral. The political economy is not.

The real prize is not electricity. It is optionality.

Here is what I think many people miss. Intercontinental electricity networks are not only about selling electrons.

They create optionality across industries.

If you can move power cheaply across borders, you can decide where to place data centers. Where to place aluminum smelters. Where to produce green hydrogen. Where to locate EV battery factories. Where to expand AI compute.

Electricity becomes an industrial policy lever. Which means the owners and designers of the network can influence industrial geography.

In an oligarchic system, industrial geography often aligns with private interest. You build the line where it benefits your other assets. Your ports. Your mines. Your real estate. Your shipping routes. Your politically protected monopolies.

This is why intercontinental networks are not just “energy projects”. They are empire projects, sometimes literal, often economic.

A quick reality check: the grid is already intercontinental in spirit, just not evenly

People talk about Europe’s interconnected grid, Nordic hydro balancing continental wind, cross channel links, Iberia to France constraints. They talk about North Africa solar feeding Europe, or the Gulf exporting power, or Central Asia power corridors, or Southeast Asian interconnections.

Pieces exist. Many are regional. Some are undersea. Some are fragile. Some are heavily politicized.

What is changing now is scale and urgency.

Decarbonization pushes more electrification. Transport, heating, industry. Demand grows. Variability grows with renewables. Storage helps, yes, but transmission is the other half of the equation. Sometimes cheaper than building batteries everywhere.

So the idea of longer distance links keeps coming back, and with it, the question of who gets to finance and control them. The potential for these intercontinental electricity networks to reshape our industrial landscape cannot be overstated; as highlighted in this research article, they offer a unique solution to some of our most pressing energy challenges by providing a flexible and sustainable energy source that can be harnessed across various sectors.

What good governance looks like, in plain terms

If intercontinental electricity networks are going to expand without turning into oligarchic toll systems, a few things matter a lot. Boring things, unfortunately. But this is where the story is decided.

• Clear ownership rules with limits on concentration, especially where a single actor could control both generation and the interconnector
• Transparent congestion revenue allocation and audited settlement systems
• Strong, independent regulators with cross border coordination
• Competitive procurement and disclosure of beneficial ownership for contractors
• Cybersecurity standards treated as critical infrastructure, not an IT checkbox
• Emergency protocols that are treaty level clear, so curtailment powers cannot be abused quietly
• Public benefit tests that include resilience and affordability, not just modeled “efficiency”

When these pieces are missing, the grid becomes a wealth transfer machine. When they are present, interconnection can genuinely lower costs and improve security.

The messy conclusion: intercontinental networks are inevitable, but the winners are not

I do not think the world is going to stop at national grids. The economics of balancing, the politics of decarbonization, and the sheer growth in electricity demand make wider interconnection extremely tempting.

But the emergence of intercontinental electricity networks will not be a purely technical evolution. It will be shaped by oligarchic dynamics wherever capital and state power are concentrated in the same hands.

That is the key tension in this part of the series.

The grid of the future could be a democratizing force, more competition, more resilience, more clean energy moving to where it is needed.

Or it could be a new map of chokepoints. A handful of privately influenced valves between nations. Toll roads for electrons. Quiet leverage that only becomes visible during the first crisis.

Maybe it will be both, depending on the region. That is usually how the real world goes. Uneven. Contradictory.

And that is why it is worth paying attention now, before the cables are sunk, before the converter stations are fenced off, before the contracts are signed for thirty years and the public only hears about it when the price spikes.

Because once the network is built, the power dynamics are built into it. Literally.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

What are intercontinental electricity networks and why are they important?

Intercontinental electricity networks, also known as supergrids, are large-scale cross-border power grids that connect different countries and regions. They enable the transfer of electricity across seas, mountains, and deserts to balance supply and demand over wide areas. These networks help improve energy security by allowing solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear power from one region to support another, reducing intermittency and enhancing reliability.

Why isn't the world already connected by a global electricity supergrid?

While the physics of connecting grids is straightforward, the main challenges are political. Issues around ownership, trust, control, regulation, tariffs, and national security make building intercontinental networks complex. Oligarchic dynamics—where a few powerful actors control key chokepoints—also complicate cooperation across borders, delaying or preventing such projects.

How do oligarchic structures influence electricity networks?

Oligarchy in electricity refers to concentrated control over generation, transmission, and regulation by a small group of powerful entities. They can leverage chokepoints like interconnectors and converter stations to exert economic and political influence. This concentration affects who benefits financially and who controls access to energy resources, shaping policy decisions and infrastructure development.

Who typically finances multi-billion dollar intercontinental electricity projects?

Due to high costs, long payback periods, political risks, and regulatory uncertainties, financing often comes from a mix of state-backed institutions, large institutional investors, infrastructure funds, national champions (major utilities), and politically connected billionaire capital. These investors can endure delays and navigate complex cross-border negotiations necessary for such projects.

What role does the state play in electricity markets and intercontinental grids?

Even in liberalized energy markets promoting competition, the grid remains a regulated monopoly with transmission usually managed by a single operator under state oversight. Intercontinental grids heighten state involvement due to national security concerns around energy dependence. States or regulators write market rules and oversee cross-border agreements essential for network operation.

How do intercontinental electricity networks change the concept of energy security?

By connecting diverse energy sources across regions with different time zones and resource availability (like solar in one area feeding night demand elsewhere), these networks reduce reliance on local generation alone. This diversification lessens vulnerability to supply disruptions or intermittency issues in renewables. Consequently, nations begin thinking about energy security as a collaborative regional or global endeavor rather than strictly national.