By IANS,
New Delhi : With global crude prices spiralling to $135 per barrel, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday said energy security will determine the future power play among nations and that China had made major inroads in this area.
“The world is not able to grapple with the crises it faces,” the prime minister told the probationary officers with the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) here, referring to the crisis which India, like other energy deficient nations, faces.
“The quest for sensitive natural resources, oil security, energy security will emerge as a major source of interplay of forces in the evolving world economy,” he said in his speech that covered subjects ranging from foreign policy to economy and development.
According to the prime minister, since the 1970s when the world woke up to the fact the era of cheap oil was dead and gone, there had been several phases of crises in managing the global hydrocarbons economy.
“We now have a similar situation where the price of hydrocarbons, particularly petroleum products, have quadrupled in the last two years. This has created new problems,” the prime minister said.
“The demand is increasing faster than ever before and the quest for access to the oil resources is going to become another major factor of power play in the world,” he said.
“The Chinese seized the opportunities and have been going around the world in Africa, in Latin America, investing, exploring and developing the natural resources for increased oil production – this tension will increase in the years to come.”