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79
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anuary
2008
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slowdown. As reported by James Kanter in the
International Herald
Tribune
, this unusually stark warning about the effect of Asia’s
emerging giants was issued by Fatih Birol, chief economist of the
International Energy Agency (IEA).
The annual
World Energy Outlook
published by the IEA is
considered the leading source for medium- to long-term energy
market projections. Mr Birol was interviewed at an oil industry
conference in London, sponsored in part by the
Herald Tribune
,
in advance of publication of the 2007 edition:
“China and India
Insights”
(“Energy Expert Sees Hazard in Costly Oil.” November 1).
“China plus India are going to dominate growth in the oil markets,”
Mr Birol declared. Over the previous 18 months, he noted, more
than two-thirds of the growth in global oil demand came from these
two countries alone. Demand for oil in China, he added, would
eventually equal the entire supply from Saudi Arabia.
As a partial consequence of this, the IEA annual report would
project oil prices that could hit levels much higher than once
thought possible, heightening the risk of a serious global economic
slowdown.
“We may see very high prices that will come to a level
where the wheels may fall off,”
Mr Birol said
.
“I definitely believe
that if prices stay at these levels, there will be a slowdown of the
global economy.”
Mr Birol said that China and India could help ameliorate the
environmental impact of their booming energy consumption by
introducing greater efficiencies, building up renewable sources of
energy, using more nuclear power, and by cutting emissions.
The Paris-based IEA was founded by the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) following the oil crisis of that
period. The mission of the 24-member intergovernmental agency is
to prevent disruptions in the supply of oil, as well as collecting and
distributing information on energy markets.
The president of Turkmenistan finds a warm
welcome in the US
In September, on his first visit to the United States, President
Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov of the former Soviet republic
Turkmenistan received an extraordinary amount of attention, even
for a chief of state. His visit was the first to the US by a Turkmen
president since 1998, and included a meeting September 25 with
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. American officials were
seizing what they saw as an opportunity to dilute the influence of
Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy monopoly, which provides
nearly a quarter of the Europe’s gas supply.
The assiduous courtship of Mr Berdymukhammedov was in marked
contrast to the bitter invective that greeted another president –
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, of Iran – in New York for the same meeting
of the United Nations General Assembly. US officials seemed
determined to make the Turkmen leader understand he has options
beyond Gazprom for developing, selling, and shipping his country’s
natural gas.
Right now, those options are largely hypothetical. Reserves in
Turkmenistan’s sector of the Caspian Sea could be shipped
westward through an undersea pipeline to Turkey – provided that
the formidable legal and economic obstacles to the building of the
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