Energy Security Archives - Page 10 of 11

Dealing with the Malacca Dilemma: China’s Effort to Protect its Energy Supply

China's dependence on ship-borne energy resources forms the bedrock of its energy security. Critical to this is the issue of sea lane of communications (SLOCs) safety. SLOC safety is at once a non-conventional security challenge and a military one, which may trigger maritime conflicts. The difficulty in dealing with this challenge is that it is integral to geopolitics and hence subject to complicated major power relations. Geo-strategic politics will increasingly determine Beijing's SLOC policy of political cooperation and military hedging.

Energy Security in Asia: The Necessity of Interdependence

The central thesis of this article is that the Asian energy consumers would serve their interests well if they look again at their energy frontiers and define them within the contours of Asian energy interdependence rather than triggering an Asian energy race. The three leading Asian consumers, China, Japan and India, are principal actors in the Asian theatre, and their needs, assessments and policies are going to be central in defining the regional energy security agenda. Their current approaches have placed them more as competitors, which could trigger conflict situations.

Geopolitics of Power Trading in South Asia: Opportunities and Challenges

It is now generally accepted that energy security could be significantly enhanced through sustained cross-border exchanges in many regions. In South Asia, however, regional energy security cooperation has seriously remained entangled in geopolitics. The possibility of overexploitation of natural resources such as coal, natural gas and oil reserves and the low level of political confidence in sharing hydro resources have placed serious obstacles to enhancing the level of energy security in the region.

Energy Transition: Strategic Necessity for India

After his landmark speech on energy independence on the eve of India's 59th Independence Day, President Abdul Kalam emphasised upon the importance of alternative fuel development to surmount the growing challenges to energy security in his opening address at the Bio-Diesel Conference on June 9, 2006. His emphasis on energy independence places immense importance on India's energy security, as the country is increasingly dependent on imported fuels.

J Nandakumar
June 26, 2006
IDSA Comments

Overfed Europe, Underpaid Russia: Beginning of a New Energy Cold War?

Russia is on the move to become an energy superpower by spreading its influence deep into Western and Eastern energy markets. Possessing the largest reserve of natural gas in the world, Russia's domestic and foreign policies have now come to be largely determined by the energy factor. Apart from the already existing market in the West, Moscow's plan to explore Asian markets was welcomed by the major energy consuming countries such as China, Japan, and the Koreas in the East Asian region.

Equity Oil and India’s Energy Security

While the efforts of ONGC-Videsh and Indian Oil Corporation are laudable, there is still some distance our firms have to travel to catch up with global competition. I urge our oil and gas PSUs to think big, think creatively and think boldly in this context…They have to be more fleet-footed in making use of global opportunities, both on the supply and demand side, I find China ahead of us in planning for the future in the field of energy security. We can no longer be complacent and must learn to think strategically, to think ahead and to act swiftly and decisively.

Two Cheers to Kyoto Treaty

We live in an age of risk – the “risk society” to use a notable phrase of German sociologist Ulrich Beck. There seems to be no escape from the culture of warning and the politics of prediction, prevention and compensation. Every now and then, the world is subjected to comprehensive reports on the global impact of climate change. They underline the things that have now become all too familiar: melting ice caps in the polar region and submergence of tropical islands, with the poor underdeveloped countries bearing the brunt of these devastating changes.

China Faces Energy Crunch

New Threats to Oil and Gas in West Asia: Issues in India’s Energy Security

Unlike other aspects of non-traditional security, energy security has been very closely linked with military security. Very often, it is the powerful state-consumers seeking to preserve an uninterrupted supply of energy at an affordable price, who threaten and use military force. At times, it is individuals and groups within the energy-producing countries seeking to resist energy-driven foreign interventions, who disrupt the supplies. The energy-military security nexus is at its peak in the present circumstances - mainly in Iraq, but also in the energy-rich West Asia.

Energy and Security in a Changing World

The centre of gravity of global economic growth is rapidly shifting to the Asian continent. The transition is led by China and India which have propelled themselves onto a robust growth trajectory to be fuelled by affordable energy supplies. These developments have been accompanied by a fortuitous but significant growth in the sources of global energy supply, thanks to the re-emergence of Russia as the new petrostate and the discovery of substantial energy deposits in the Caspian and Central Asian Republics.