India, China make competition for oil intense

Dubai, Nov 11 (PTI) Demand growth in China and India
makes the competition for available oil resources more
intense, as oil demand growth in these countries will be over
half the growth in global demand between 2025 and 2050,
experts at a conference here said.
According to panelists at the 16th Annual Energy
Conference organised by the Emirates Center for Strategic
Studies and Research (ECSSR), this demand will spread to all
other forms of energy and will have enormous impact on markets
for exportable oil.
These nations will depend on imports for three quarters
of their consumption by 2035, by which time the US, Japan,
Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, China and
India will need imports of over 40 mbpd, a 25 per cent
increase from 2005.
There will be insufficient oil to satisfy global needs by
then. This will make the competition to secure oil supplies
extremely intense.
The US and China are in growing competition, usually
involving transfers of military equipment and development
funds to cement the supplier-consumer relationship, they
added.
These supplies are often costly to develop, but the
desperation of international oil companies forces them to
pursue ever more expensive supplies, including unconventional
sources.
Energy scarcity must be dealt with and the fact that
one quarter of the world's population lacks access to
electricity is a geopolitical time-bomb, they concluded.
Outlook and Challenges was the focus on the second day of
the conference.
Arne Walther, former Secretary General of the
International Energy Forum (IEF), said concerns about the
geopolitics of oil stemmed from the fact that governments need
oil as a means to propel economic and social development, and
citizens of oil exporting states expect their governments to
pass on the benefits of resource extraction.
"Investment in energy production must be made during
times of abundance. Competition for energy resources among
consumers will increase, as will competition among producers
of different types of energy," he added. PTI CORR
SAK