Feb. 16, 2005
Sonia Chaturvedi
India Daily
India and China in the next few years will be in direct competition with America and European Union for oil and Natural gas from all over the world specially Middle East. The bottom line is that who ever gets to use the oil, will grow faster and eventually dominate the world. In recent days Indian and Chinese oil officials have silently joined hands anticipating a direct east-west oil bidding war. Sometimes you cannot win the oil war by just money, you have to have real friends in the Middle East and the World. And that is exactly what is happening. India and China are secretly securing oil reserves from every direction.
Dave O''Reilly, chairman and chief executive of the second largest US oil and gas group, pointed to the closer ties between consumers such as China and India and Middle East producers at a time when cheap-to-find oil was becoming more scarce.
"We''re seeing the beginnings of a bidding war for Middle Eastern oil between east and west," said Mr O''Reilly in a keynote address to a Houston energy conference. “And we''re seeing the beginning of alliances between Asian entities and Middle East entities for the long term," he said. "It's very important that our government recognize that."
Mr O''Reilly said greater access to energy had become "a strategic imperative" for Asia, which had become a far larger importer of oil and gas than North America, where US imports were countered by domestic production and output from Canada and Mexico.
"The time when we could count on cheap oil and even cheaper natural gas is clearly ending," he said, adding that a shortage of gas had led some industry to relocate from the US, while higher energy and transport costs could lead to a shift in consumer spending patterns.
Indian and Chinese national oil companies are finally showing the world that planned and mixed economies may mean success in certain circumstances.
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