ASEAN energy ministers eye future despite turmoil
ASEAN energy ministers eye future despite turmoil
SINGAPORE (Reuters): Energy ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), planning a regionwide gas and electricity grid, will work to keep strategic long-term energy projects moving despite a year of economic turmoil, the group said in a statement on Saturday.
"ASEAN should not lose sight of long term strategic goals and while tackling immediate problems, must continue to pursue economic cooperation at the working level and keep strategic projects moving," the statement said.
It was issued following a brief annual meeting of ASEAN energy ministers in Singapore on Saturday.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The statement said the group would resolve to increase cooperation in energy and said there were growing opportunities to cooperate on gas and electricity projects.
ASEAN's most often mooted plan is a regionwide gas grid and electricity grid, first proposed in 1988.
A study by the ASEAN-European Commission Energy Management Training and Research Center last year showed the gas grid would cost US$150 billion to develop over a 20-year period.
The study did not include the cost of linking the grid to Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos.
A fully integrated gas and electricity grid is probably still many years away, analysts say, but projects are emerging that will start to link the region together.
The latest project was signed last month, when Singapore and Indonesia agreed a $4 billion gas sales deal.
Under the 22-year deal, Singapore's Sembawang Gas plans to import 325 million standard cubic feet per day (scfd) of natural gas from Indonesia's West Natuna gas field from 2001.
Singapore already receives gas from Malaysia, but the Natuna deal is Singapore's first import agreement for piped natural gas from Indonesia.
In April, Malaysia and Thailand state oil firms agreed to buy 390 million scfd from Block A-18 of the Thai-Malaysia joint development area.
Malaysia and Thailand plan a 190-kilometer pipeline across their shared peninsula to carry two million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil.
The pipeline will offer an alternative land route for oil and is aimed at easing tanker traffic in the busy Straits of Malacca.
Analysts say that the projects are emerging more from commercial pressures than as a result of a blueprint laid down by ASEAN.
But the ASEAN energy statement said that the energy ministers agreed on the need for closer policy coordination in energy because of the growing number of cross border supply projects in gas and electricity that were emerging. They said 10 projects had been identified.
The energy ministers plan to hold their next annual meeting in Thailand in July 1999, the statement said.