Oil Security Issues in Asia and the Pacific

David Isaak ()
Additional contact information
David Isaak: FGE-FACTS Global Energy

No 400, ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank

Abstract: By 2010, demand for oil in developing Asia substantially exceeded that of North America and Europe combined, but demand for natural gas has been expanding rapidly and countries with large coal resources have used them instead of oil wherever possible. The goal of oil security is to make domestic economies and the international market adaptable to changes in availability and price. Increasing oil production and decreasing demand; producing more alternatives; and increasing stocks, fungibility, and market responsiveness augment security while subsidies diminish it. The threat today is not targeted cutoffs; it is price spikes, and strategic reserves can help counter them. Lack of specification restricts the free flow of petroleum products and therefore decreases regional energy security; fungibility would be greatly increased if there were some degree of standardization. In 2010, 76% of all Middle East exports went to Asia, but oil from the Middle East and Africa will not satisfy the growing Asian demand. Asian refining capacity cannot, however, cope with the large undeveloped resources in the Americas from super-heavy deposits or tar sands. A flourishing benchmark futures market east of Suez would help to ensure fair pricing and to moderate long-term price fluctuations.

Keywords: oil security; energy; Asia and the Pacific (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q31 Q40 Q41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2014-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-sea
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.adb.org/publications/oil-security-issues-asia-and-pacific Full text (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:adbewp:0400

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank 6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong City, 1550 Metro Manila, Philippines. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Orlee Velarde ().