05 Feb 2006

Myanmar-Petrochina Agreement: A Setback To India's Quest For Energy Security
South Asia Analysis Group, Noida, India
[Extract: "Paper no. 1681; 19. 01. 2006 [...] Expecting an exponential growth in its energy demands due to expanding economy India has been trying hard in recent times to secure energy supplies. The volatility in international oil prices gave a sense of urgency to this need. But unfortunately, India's oil diplomacy has not been sufficiently geared to meet this challenge. As a result its oil companies have been outsmarted or rather outbidded by the Chinese firms in several recent deals. Most embarrassingly, India has now also lost a deal in Myanmar where no such bidding was held. [...] China has linked energy to its foreign policy far longer than India and has been more successful in diversifying its energy resources, developing a varied network of oil suppliers from Africa to South America. India will also have to integrate its Oil diplomacy with its foreign policy. India has also made another mistake of waiting for too long for Bangladesh to join the project. Given the kind of prevailing geopolitics in south Asia Bangladesh is unlikely to join the project any time soon. India can still go ahead with the project bypassing Bangladesh if it is viable and sufficient amount of gas is available for transportation." - Anand Kumar]
Site contents: Volume of Gas; Politics Affecting Tri-nation Gas Pipeline Project; Reasons Prompting Myanmar to Opt for China; Aiyer Proposes Sino-India Cooperation in Energy; China Not Totally Averse to Cooperate with India.
URL http://www.saag.org/papers17/paper1681.html
Internet Archive (www.archive.org) [the paper was not archived at the time of this abstract. However, in a few weeks time it will be available at web.archive.org/web/*/www.saag.org]
Link reported by: T. Matthew Ciolek (tmciolek--at--coombs.anu.edu.au)
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