China’s energy insecurity and Iran’s crisis

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone on record stating that the fear of soaring energy prices should not deter the international community from imposing comprehensive sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

That is easier said than done, especially when looking at the dire economic and non-economic consequences of the current Iranian crisis for China, Iran’s energy partner.

China currently gets 13.6% of its oil imports from Iran. Beijing is also in the process of importing Iranian natural gas. China’s plan is to become a comprehensive participant in exploration, drilling, petrochemicals, pipelines and other upstream and downstream services related to Iran’s oil and gas industries.

..In the light of Iran’s rejection of the IAEA move and threats of punitive UN measures against it, China must calculate the various unhappy scenarios involving serious disruption in the Iranian oil supply, not to mention the lesser threat of a more comprehensive disruption in oil flows from the Persian Gulf as a whole in a military scenario. It must factor those risks into its present options of how to behave at the Security Council when the matter arises next month, after the IAEA has presented its latest report on Iran to the UN.

Asia Times