Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Afterword: failed states
Noam Chomsky, Zmag
…Indian analyst Aijaz Ahmad observes that Iran could “emerge as the virtual lynchpin in the making, over the next decade or so, of what China and Russia have come to regard as an absolutely indispensable Asian Energy Security Grid, for breaking Western control of the world’s energy supplies and securing the great industrial revolution of Asia.” South Korea and Southeast Asian countries are likely to join, possibly Japan as well.
A crucial question is how India will react. It rejected US pressures to withdraw from an oil pipeline deal with Iran, though it is still vacillating on grounds of security within Pakistani Baluchistan. Meanwhile Pakistan has pledged to build the pipeline whatever India decides (and presumably against US wishes). On the other hand, India joined the US and EU in voting for an anti-Iranian resolution at the IAEA, joining also in their hypocrisy, since India rejects the NPT regime to which Iran, so far, appears to be largely conforming. Ahmad reports that India may have secretly reversed its stand at the IAEA after Iran briefly threatened to terminate a $20 billion gas deal…
India too has options. It may choose to be a US client, or it may prefer to join a more independent Asian bloc that is taking shape, with growing ties to Middle East oil producers.
In a series of informative commentaries, the deputy editor of The Hindu observes that “if the 21st century is to be an `Asian century’, Asia’s passivity in the energy sector has to end.” Though it “hosts the world’s largest producers and fastest growing consumers of energy,” Asia still relies “on institutions, trading frameworks and armed forces from outside the region in order to trade with itself,” a debilitating heritage from the imperial era. The key is India-China cooperation. In 2005, he points out, “India and China have managed to confound analysts around the world by turning their much-vaunted rivalry for the acquisition of oil and gas assets in third countries into a nascent partnership that could alter the basic dynamics of the global energy market.”
A January 2006 agreement signed in Beijing “cleared the way for India and China to collaborate not only in technology but also in hydrocarbon exploration and production, a partnership that eventually could alter fundamental equations in the world’s oil and natural gas sector.” At a meeting in New Delhi of Asian energy producers and consumers a few months earlier, India had “unveiled an ambitious $22.4 billion pan-Asian gas grid and oil security pipeline system” extending throughout all of Asia, from Siberian fields through Central Asia and to the Middle East energy giants, also integrating the consumer states.
Furthermore, Asian countries “hold more than two trillion dollars worth of foreign reserves,” overwhelmingly denominated in dollars, though prudence suggests diversification. A first step, already being contemplated, is an Asian oil market trading in euros. The impact on the international financial system and the balance of global power could be significant.
(26 April 2006)
A long Chomskyan analysis of the world political situation. As the excerpt makes clear, energy increasingly is a key factor. According to my count, the word “oil” occurred 29 times in this essay. -BA
How China Is Winning the Oil Race
John D. Markman, CNBC via The Street
Is America too ethical to have cheap gasoline?
That is the inescapable question presented to U.S. investors and policy makers as pump prices soar after a state visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The U.S. is the world’s greatest consumer of energy at present, but China is the world’s fastest-growing consumer. That puts us in direct competition for any new sources of crude oil, natural gas, coal and uranium that materialize through exploration and discovery, not to mention any current sources that profit-seeking producers decide to put up for grabs.
Increasingly, new energy sources that China is acquiring are in countries that Americans find distasteful. Many of them are in Africa, in countries with horrific human-rights records such as Sudan, Chad and the Republic of the Congo. And much of the energy is controlled by rapacious despots in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan and in Southeast Asia’s Myanmar.
Energy acquisition is a zero-sum game in which there are winners and losers. Any new energy that China obtains for its fast-growing economy is unavailable to us forever. So you just have to wonder whether the U.S.’s antipathy for dealing with the worst of the world’s rogue states has led inexorably to $4-a-gallon gasoline this spring.
… For consumers, outraged indignation is about the best you can do, along with new personal choices about limiting the use of fossil fuel. China has no incentive to bend to U.S. demands to force change on its repressive foreign energy partners. And our politicians are unlikely yet to ease up on rules preventing U.S. companies from participating in the sort of bribery and weapons brokerage that has become de rigueur for doing business in the equatorial zone where most new energy sources are being discovered.
So this really is just another case of joining ’em when you can’t beat ’em. Shake your fist at the Chinese if you must, but also continue to buy global miners and drillers on dips in this bull market for commodities, sell your SUV, move closer to work, install solar energy panels and make peace with nuclear energy.
(27 April 2006)
Long piece.
Nations often show their seamiest side in the pursuit of oil – wars, imperialism, exploitation.
One of the earliest accounts in the history of oil was written by a general of Greek mercenaries named Hieronymus of Cardia. On his trip in 312 BCE, he described the harvesting of floating mounds of bitumen in the Dead Sea. His mission? To “to expel the Arabs and secure the oil for his master, the Macedonian Greek king Antigonus I Monophthalmos – the -One-Eyed.'”
(Ancient Oil Industries by Dr. Zayn Bilkadi)
Related: China’s oil policy makes US panic (Gulf News)
-BA
Rights Take Backseat to Oil
Leaders accused of violations meet with White House
Tom Raum, Associate Press via Common Dreams
Searching for energy supplies and allies against Iran, the Bush administration is reaching out to leaders who rule countries that are rich in oil and gas but accused of authoritarian rule and human rights violations.
The presidents of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Equatorial Guinea are all getting special attention. The effort sometimes seems at odds with President Bush’s stated second-term goal of spreading democracy.
“If those countries were not oil producers, we would probably not be meeting with their leaders,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a foreign policy analyst with the Brookings Institution. “There is some tension with Bush’s democracy-promotion agenda. They are pulling in different directions.”
Bush meets Friday at the White House with the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev. Vice President Dick Cheney next week visits the central Asian nation of Kazakhstan and its leader President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Human rights groups have criticized both leaders. But the two former Soviet republics are allies in the war on terrorism and both have significant energy reserves.
(28 April 2006
