Undeclared war for 'energy security'

Undeclared war for 'energy security'

Paul Roberts
The Washington Post

While some debate whether the war in Iraq was or was not
"about oil," another war, this one involving little but oil, has
broken out between two of the world's most powerful nations.

For months China and Japan have been locked in a diplomatic
battle over access to the big oil fields in Siberia. Japan, which
depends entirely on imported oil, is desperately lobbying Moscow
for a 2,300-mile pipeline from Siberia to coastal Japan. But
fast-growing China, now the world's second-largest oil user,
after the United States, sees Russian oil as vital for its own
"energy security" and is pushing for a 1,400-mile pipeline south
to Daqing.

The petro-rivalry has become so intense that Japan has offered
to finance the US$5 billion pipeline, invest $7 billion in
development of Siberian oil fields and throw in an additional $2
billion for Russian "social projects" -- this despite the
certainty that if Japan does win Russia's oil, relations between
Tokyo and Beijing may sink to their lowest, potentially most
dangerous, levels since World War II.

Asia's undeclared oil war is but the latest reminder that in a
global economy dependent largely on a single fuel -- oil --
"energy security" means far more than hardening refineries and
pipelines against terrorist attack.

At its most basic level, energy security is the ability to
keep the global machine humming -- that is, to produce enough
fuels and electricity at affordable prices that every nation can
keep its economy running, its people fed and its borders
defended. A failure of energy security means that the momentum of
industrialization and modernity grinds to a halt. And by that
measure, we are failing.

In the United States and Europe, new demand for electricity is
outpacing the new supply of power and natural gas and raising the
specter of more rolling blackouts.

In the "emerging" economies, such as Brazil, India and
especially China, energy demand is rising so fast it may double
by 2020. And this only hints at the energy crisis facing the
developing world, where nearly two billion people -- a third of
the world's population -- have almost no access to electricity or
liquid fuels and are thus condemned to a medieval existence that
breeds despair, resentment and, ultimately, conflict.

In other words, we are on the cusp of a new kind of
war -- between those who have enough energy and those who do not
but are increasingly willing to go out and get it. While nations
have always competed for oil, it seems more and more likely that
the race for a piece of the last big reserves of oil and natural
gas will be the dominant geopolitical theme of the 21st century.

Already we can see the outlines. China and Japan are scrapping
over Siberia. In the Caspian Sea region, European, Russian,
Chinese and American governments and oil companies are battling
for a stake in the big oil fields of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

In Africa, the United States is building a network of military
bases and diplomatic missions whose main goal is to protect
American access to oilfields in volatile places such as Nigeria,
Cameroon, Chad and tiny Sao Tome -- and, as important, to deny
that access to China and other thirsty superpowers.

The diplomatic tussles only hint at what we'll see in the
Middle East, where most of the world's remaining oil lies. For
all the talk of big new oil discoveries in Russia and Africa --
and of how this gush of crude will "free" America and other big
importers from the machinations of OPEC -- the geological facts
speak otherwise. Even with the new Russian and African oil,
worldwide oil production outside the Middle East is barely
keeping pace with demand.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Russia and France clashed
noisily with the United States over whose companies would have
access to the oil in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Less well known is
the way China has sought to build up its own oil alliances in the
Middle East -- often over Washington's objections. In 2000
Chinese oil officials visited Iran, a country U.S. companies are
forbidden to deal with; China also has a major interest in Iraqi
oil.

But China's most controversial oil overture has been made to a
country America once regarded as its most trusted oil ally: Saudi
Arabia. In recent years, Beijing has been lobbying Riyadh for
access to Saudi reserves, the largest in the world.

In return, the Chinese have offered the Saudis a foothold in
what will be the world's biggest energy market -- and, as a
bonus, have thrown in offers of sophisticated Chinese weaponry,
including ballistic missiles and other hardware, that the United
States and Europe have refused to sell to the Saudis.

Granted, the United States, with its vast economic and
military power, would probably win any direct "hot" war for oil.
The far more worrisome scenario is that an escalating rivalry
among other big consumers will spark new conflicts -- conflicts
that might require U.S. intervention and could easily destabilize
the world economy upon which American power ultimately rests.

As demand for oil becomes sharper, as global oil production
continues to lag (and as producers such as Saudi Arabia and
Nigeria grow more unstable) the struggle to maintain access to
adequate energy supplies, always a critical mission for any
nation, will become even more challenging and uncertain and take
up even more resources and political attention.

This escalation will not only drive up the risk of conflict
but will make it harder for governments to focus on long-term
energy challenges, such as avoiding climate change, developing
alternative fuels and alleviating Third World energy
poverty -- challenges that are themselves critical to long-term
energy security but which, ironically, will be seen as
distracting from the current campaign to keep the oil flowing.

This, ultimately, is the real energy-security dilemma. The
more obvious it becomes that an oil-dominated energy economy is
inherently insecure, the harder it becomes to move on to
something beyond oil.

The writer is the author of The End of Oil: On the Edge
of a Perilous New World.