Asia to work together on energy exploration: Report
Tuesday, June 22 2004 - 01:31 PM WIB
The countries will also promise to swap information freely on their energy needs, reserves and stockpiles, according to a draft copy of the Qingdao Initiative seen by Reuters.
The pledges come as part of a first-ever framework on energy cooperation to be signed later on Tuesday by the 22-member Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), which also includes oil-producing nations such as Kazakhstan, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar.
"It will be a road map between those countries for the first time," Sheik Mohammed bin Mubarak Al-Khalifa, deputy prime minister of Bahrain and a forum delegate, told Reuters.
"Energy is always an issue. Sky-high oil prices are not an advantage to anyone. Enhanced energy cooperation is necessary to safeguard Asian energy security and promote economic development," he said.
Other diplomats at the forum singled out the South China Sea, Myanmar and Indonesia as three potentially oil-rich areas in the region and good places to explore for new reserves.
The group agreed in May to take steps towards a regional oil stockpile that would be used to survive supply squeezes due to terror attacks or other threats, but that was not explicitly mentioned in the Qingdao agreement.
The Asia-Pacific region imports about two-thirds of the oil it consumes. The International Energy Agency forecasts that demand will rise to 23.08 million barrels per day (bpd) this year from 21.99 million bpd in 2003.
Oil prices shot to 21-year highs in June above $42 a barrel for US crude on fears supplies would not be enough to meet strong demand generated by a global economic rebound.
Worries of sabotage attacks on the oil infrastructure in the West Asia, including key producer Saudi Arabia, which supplies more than 70 per cent of Asia's oil imports, have also kept crude prices on the boil.(*)