South-east Asia: growing energy demand

This article presents 3 major players in the Asia-pacific energy market: China, Australia and India. China became a net importer of oil in 1993. Within the next decade China's imports are expected to outstrip those of many OECD countries. While reforms fostered the Chinese boom of the past 20 years, they left the energy sector mostly unaffected. The nation made considerable efforts to exploit its domestic resources but growth eventually overwhelmed them. Now China favours investment strategies whose purpose is to position China for energy security reasons in long term scenario in which much energy is imported. Domestic resources continue being developed and cooperation programmes between PetroChina and foreign oil companies BP Amoco and Shell were announced recently. Australian energy companies are cooperating in order to develop exportation of liquefied natural gas towards Asia's markets. The Indian government is promoting the use of natural gas for the production of electricity. The Indian gas production was about 23 Gm3 in 1998 and is expected to reach 30 Gm3 in 2000-2001 and the potential remains very important: 700 Gm3/year. In the immediate future the domestic production will remain overwhelmed by the fast growing nation's demand, so India is expected to become a major natural gas importer. Several gas terminals are being built on the coast in order to supply new gas-fueled power plants. (A.C.)