(Extended version of the article published in the Clarin IECO Sunday March 21, 2010)
Southeast Asia focus the global energy business over the next 30 years, with China and India as the "stars" of economic growth. The nations of the BRICs emerge as players in a multipolar international order, and strongly affect the battle for the achievement of raw materials and energy.
The tremendous economic growth experienced China in the last two decades has transformed this country into one of the biggest global buyers of oil. According to the "World Energy Outlook 2009, an annual report that makes the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEA)," China will overtake the United States shortly after 2025 and become the largest importer of oil and gas (in monetary terms) while spending India the in oil and gas imports exceed to Japan soon after 2020 and will become the third largest in the world. " For this analysis, the agency OECD raises a "reference scenario" based on failure to reach a global agreement on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
To these we must add the powerful development of the countries of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN ): Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, which as a region have an "economy comparable to that of Canada and Mexico combined, and a population that exceeds that of the European Union . " The report IEA is clear in its conclusions. "Along with the emergence of China and India the in the global energy scenario, these trends seem to point to centralization of the global energy business in Asia. "
In the short term, Agency estimated that in 2010 China's oil demand will increase by 4.2%: a total of 379 million tons of oil, 64.4 million tons of gasoline and 144 million tonnes of gas oil.
This growing dependence on foreign energy resources led to the CPC leadership to establish two strategic. Domestically, determine the construction of 32 nuclear plants by 2020, together with increased local production of oil and gas, and increasing clean energy sources, primarily to reduce the use of coal. This as part of an ambitious goal: ensuring that by 2050 half of the energy comes from sources "clean."
In its external relations, China is conducting an unbiased penetration strategy for Asia, Africa and Latin America, that privileges provision of raw materials over the ideological affinities, schemes political and international law. Thus, for Dr. Alejandro Simonoff, Secretary of the Master International Relations University of La Plata. "China in Latin America seeks natural resource. The strategy focuses on raw materials in terms of development that has had its economy in recent years in an attempt to diversify energy supply sources. is also looking to invest on investments linked to the production process, since the purchase of U.S. treasury bills is no longer as profitable in the short and medium term, but these investments were related to the relationship between the dollar and the yuan. "
Simonoff Here is another reason why the Chinese have bet on a strategic partnership with Bridas, "a company that has invested very unusual for a company Argentina . An example is the project launched in Turkmenistan in the early '90s, a pipeline ending in the Indian Ocean ports. Conversely, taking into account that Bridas is a very international development, is likely to be given a strategy toward the Chinese market. Consider that, according to trade figures Argentina's foreign released by the INDEC for the month of January this year, imports from Southeast Asia accounted for 23% of the bought abroad for our country, "said the scholar.
In fact, China is invading a traditional area of \u200b\u200binfluence of the United States, a country that seems not to know very well how to deal with this "brother" enemy ", which follows growing at 9% average annual exports much of its production to the large U.S. market and has bonds in amounts in the millions. Beyond the rhetoric of peace and goodwill, shorts are permanent. At the event, while the State Department conducts a policy of siege of the Iranian state since the dispute over its nuclear program, China protects the regime of the Ayatollahs within the Security Council of the United Nations. The Asian power is also the main supplier of weapons and military technology to the Iranian armed forces. Surely this is related to Iran, with Russia and Qatar, owns half of global gas reserves recorded. Just the Chinese authorities have been concerned to ensure that supply from the Middle East, former Soviet republics of central Asia, and Russia itself. To reach agreement with the current Iraqi authorities to exploit the Ahdab oil field over the next two decades. Another example of a pragmatism that "separating politics from business" as they like to argue in the upper echelons of the CCP.
When the Berlin Wall fell seemed to emerge a unipolar world, with the United States as a power steering and libremercado as a doctrine of globalization. But there was the "end history ", but the emergence" of non-traditional actors on the international scene, which finds expression in the field of raw materials and energy, "says Simonoff, and exemplifies:" When a few months ago came the possibility of selling Repsol - YPF, China and Russia were those that were involved in the operation ", which highlights the emergence of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). "There are projections that indicate that these economies may add a GDP equal to U.S. in 2030. Although there are surveys, which can be fulfilled or not, indicate a potential change in an international system is now multipolar. Although States Unidos siguen siendo la primera potencia mundial, la crisis lo ubicó en una situación de repliegue, tratando de recuperar su economía” agrega.
La recesión más grave desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial brindó al presidente Obama la oportunidad de avanzar con a development program of clean energy from unconventional gas to biofuels. The strategic objective in its own words, is to rid the U.S. of "dependency" on oil, often provided by schemes considered "dictatorial" or "terrorist" by Washington. But this decision also may be linked to the relative loss of U.S. influence in the Middle East from the failure of the occupation of Iraq, and the active role that the BRIC group has been developing in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
On the latter continent, China's strategy is more focused in countries that can provide specific commodities. For example the case of Sudan, where China holds the ruling regime because it allows access to oil, despite having been indicted by Court of International Criminal following the genocide practiced towards political and social groups opponents in a bloody civil war unleashed precisely by the dispute of oil resources.
Europe appears more complicated in the medium term as they do not know how evolve the crisis in Greece, nor as weak impact on the economic recovery. EU actor is more committed to the generation of energy low impact on global warming. But in fact today has a strong dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and gas that will provide Russia with the countries of the Maghreb. " The European Union was conceived in the Treaty of Rome as an autonomous space of both the United States and the Soviet Union - reflects Simonoff - "But he is losing prominence on the global scale. What is put into play here is the existence of Europe social. The argument is the loss of competitiveness relative to other countries where wages are on the floor. "
