Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Energy Security Holy Grail of Next Century

A growing number of industrialized countries will compete, and perhaps, go to war over the shrinking pie of global hydrocarbon supplies.

Natural gas is the energy of the future. Russia's natural gas production is the largest in the world and state-run natural gas monopoly Gazprom holds nearly one-third of the world's natural gas reserves.
http://www.russianembassy.org/RUSSIA/Economy/New_2002/ENERGY2.htm

This article mentions India’s largest single foreign investment is a $ 1.3 billion stake by ONGC-Videsh in the vast Sakhalin gas-fields on Russia’s Pacific frontier. It should be noted that British Petroleum and Shell have announced their plans to invest about 15 billion U.S. dollars in Russia.
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=499308&PageNum=0

A significant investment in the hydrocarbon supplies of a country is an incentive for the investing country to protect the territorial integrity or sovereignty of the country in which it has invested. Nor are the ‘Oil Wars’ limited to non-producing countries investing in producers as oil and gas rich nations such as Russia and Iran compete for the hydrocarbons of other producers.

This investment can take the form of money or military might. -Am



Russia’s Resurgent Military Might
by Daulat Singh

WHETHER it is a pre-presidential election gimmick or really testing the defensive and offensive readiness, the Russian President, Mr Vladimir Putin, launched large-scale war games in the second week of February involving the nuclear triad and conventional forces in what was believed to be a massive demonstration of Russia’s resurgent military might.

The strategic forces exercise included test-firing of several land-based intercontinental nuclear missiles, one submarine-borne ballistic missile, and several aircraft-borne long-range cruise missiles. The exercise ended with the launch of a Kosmos-series military satellite from the Plisetsk cosmodrome on February 18.

Analysts said it was the largest Russian nuclear forces manoeuvres in two decades imitating an all-out nuclear war. They come at a moment of fresh strains in Russia’s relations with the US over Washington’s plans to enlarge its foothold in the former Soviet Republics. Nuclear and conventional forces will try out new methods of “confronting military threats and national security challenges”, Gen Baluyevsky said. Apart from that, the war games were also intended to check the ability of conventional forces to move troops and hardware over large distances.

There are many strategic and economic reasons to believe that energy security is likely to be the holy grail of the next century, as a growing number of industrialised countries compete, and perhaps, go to war over the shrinking pie of global hydrocarbon supplies.

Nowadays, the US quest to diversify its oil and gas resources away from the Persian Gulf dominates the headlines. But not far behind, rapidly developing countries such as India and China are outstripping their existing energy arrangements and beginning to worry about their vulnerabilities to geopolitical shifts, terrorism and the vagaries of the marketplace.

Russia, which is both a huge oil consumer and the world’s second-largest exporter, is bound to be a key player on both sides of the coming search for a new global energy order. American military deployments in the past few years illustrate a growing preoccupation with this problem, as US troops shift eastward, away from their old Cold War bases in Western Europe to new staging grounds inside, or within the reach of the great petroleum-rich arc that stretches through Central and West Asia to the Persian Gulf.

It’s estimated that by 2050, more than 80 per cent of the world’s petroleum extraction will be concentrated in this arc. The Caspian/Persian Gulf region may have 800 billion barrels of oil, and an equivalent quantity of natural gas. Two American continents and Europe combined have about 160 billion barrels, which will be exhausted within two decades. No wonder, the focus of American power and the global community’s concerns are on the move.

Permanent US bases are to be built in Bulgaria and Romania on the Black Sea, as well as in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Negotiations are underway to station a rapid deployment unit of American Special Forces in Azerbaijan to protect the Caspian oilfields and the long US-sponsored pipeline that will snake from Baku, through the unstable Caucuses, to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

Another project that’s bound to reappear, if stability ever comes to Afghanistan, is the trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (TAP), which would carry Central Asian oil and gas to warm water ports in Pakistan, thus, completing the Russian isolation and its existing pipeline network from future development of Caspian petroleum.

Of course, much of this is taking place under the auspices of the war on terrorism. But no large or permanent US deployments are planned to help bring stability to the civil war zones of Africa, or even the turbulent little republic of Haiti — so close to America’s own shores — because, we must assume, they have no oil.

Will the measures being taken by the US ensure energy security for the world, or will they bring long-term instability that would worsen the situation? Will American hegemony clash with the interests of other regional powers? Russia’s answer is already in. the deepening struggle between Moscow and Washington for influence in Central Asia and the Caucuses spells trouble between these two powers in future.

A critical question concerns how India and China will behave in the coming decades as their own needs multiply. India, already the world’s fifth largest energy market, has an appetite that is growing by about 6 per cent annually. China currently accounts for 1 per cent of global energy production, but 7 per cent of consumption. At current rates, China will be the world’s second largest energy market after the US within two decades.

These countries may choose to move strategically close to the US. It’s possible that open global petroleum markets — even if policed by the American armed forces — may prove to be the best and the fairest way of distributing scarce oil and gas supplies in future. But if the US intervention in Iraq and other parts of the oil-belt fails, or stirs up greater instability, India and China may become the first victims of constricting energy supplies and soaring prices.

Russia should now be factored into the equation. Russia is the biggest arms supplier to India and China, but it also supplies civilian nuclear technology — the best existing alternative to fossil fuels — to both the countries. With five per cent of the world’s oil reserves, Russia produces 10 per cent of current global output but consumes only 4 per cent. The greater part of Russia’s petroleum is concentrated in Siberia and the Far East, a geographical fact that invites the construction of southbound pipelines into the industrial heartlands of China and India.

Already, India’s largest single foreign investment is a $ 1.3 billion stake by ONGC-Videsh in the vast Sakhalin gas-fields on Russia’s Pacific frontier. Far greater possibilities beckon. Peace and security in Asia over the coming decades may not need the Pax Americana, with its legions of high-tech troops, but just more co-operation between the three giants, India, Russia and China. INAV

http://www.navhindtimes.com/stories.php?part=news&Story_ID=030620