Abstract
With the rapid development of international energy trade, its structure has shown a trend toward complexity and network development. The traditional unilateral or bilateral perspective of causal analysis can no longer explain the changes in the international energy trade network at this stage. This paper constructs the world energy trade network from 2000 to 2020, analyzes the structural characteristics of the network, and adopts the quadratic assignment procedure method to deconstruct and explain the structural evolution of the world energy trade network. The study shows that the global energy trade network is increasingly connected and has small-world characteristics; the growing global energy demand coexists with the increasing energy monopoly; GDP difference and geographical distance are the decisive factors in forming an international energy trade network. It is suggested that countries should strengthen the integrated development of energy trade; formulate differentiated regional policies according to the structure and economic development characteristics of national and regional energy trade; pay more attention to the hub vertexes in the international energy trade network; and formulate differentiated energy strategies for countries and regions with different development levels, taking into account their development situations.