India Must Catch Up With China on Energy, Singh Says

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India needs to catch up with neighboring China in securing energy supplies, suggesting competition between the world’s two most populous nations for oil and gas fields may intensify.
India’s biggest explorer, Oil & Natural Gas Corp., and other state-run companies face increased competition from China’s three biggest oil companies led by China National Petroleum Corp. in bids to drill fields in Russia, the Middle East and Africa.

“We need to strengthen our oil companies in launching them as global firms,” Singh said at Petrotech 2005, a conference organized by Oil & Natural Gas in New Delhi today. “China is ahead of us in planning for its energy security — India can no longer be complacent.”

India and China both face stagnant domestic oil production as their biggest fields age, forcing them to seek stakes in ventures from Russia to Australia and Iran. China’s imports have risen over the past decade from zero to 40 percent of local consumption as demand more than doubled. India imports 70 percent of its oil needs.

Bloomberg