Energy 'as vital' as China for new global power

A senior Australian international relations specialist says the changing economics and politics of energy will be as important as the rise of China in reshaping global power and that it could be more important than climate change. Emeritus professor Stuart Harris says energy issues have the potential to spark conflict over existing disputes in areas like the South China Sea.

MOTTRAM: Most of the projected growth in global energy demand is expected to come from fast developing China and India. But other Asian countries are on the same trajectory, just as forecasts indicate that oil production will soon peak – or more likely plateau – putting new pressure on supplies. It’s part of an equation that emeritus professor Stuart Harris from the Australian National University says needs the same sort of attention which is given to the challenge of the rise of China itself.

HARRIS: It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to look at international relations without looking at energy and since the changes in play, I think, are quite fundamental, they will lead to major changes in global power, changes in political and economic power.

MOTTRAM: He calls it the new geopolitics of energy and he says it has three broad structural features – the end of cheap oil, the changed role of the major international oil companies, and the growing energy importance of the Middle East and Russia, home to most of the world’s remaining oil and gas reserves.

Another element is that oil exporting countries are gaining much greater economic power through high energy revenues, which they invest overseas through their sovereign wealth funds to buy influence, an example being Venezuela in Latin America.

So, for oil importers, energy security is already at the top of the security agenda.

ABC Australia