Gregor MacDonald put together a great chart earlier this week:
Now there are quite a few interesting observations to make here, as Gregor writes, about developed demand peaking, Brazilian bioethanol and more. But what struck us most was that the chart is total, not per capita consumption – so that would be for an Indian population of 1.139bn, Brazilian of 191.9m and Californian of 36m.
The IEA forecasts that, without significant efforts to mitigate climate change, India’s primary oil demand will grow by 200m tonnes of oil equivalent by 2030; second only to China, which is about double that rate.
So it’s not surprising that Saudi Arabia, for whom developed economies are becoming less important oil buyers, is keen to build ties with India. In a Riyadh meeting early this month, Saudi Arabian officials agreed to double crude exports to India. Bloomberg reported comments by Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi:
Al-Naimi expressed in the meeting Saudi Arabia’s “desire and readiness for providing India with its present and future needs of oil,” according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency.
Meanwhile al-Naimi’s Indian counterpart, Murli Deora, said that “Virtually all Indian oil refineries are designed to process Saudi oil,”according to India’s Economic Times.
We wonder then, what this means for the Oil and Natural Gas Corp’s plans to become involved with Russia’s Gazprom and Rosneft. The FT reports:
ONGC, India’s largest oil company, has expressed interest in an “equity participation” in the development of the Sakhalin 3 and Timan Pechora fields. It also wants to develop the Yamal peninsular, a gas-rich area of northern Russia that holds some of the largest reserves in the world.
Arvind Mahajan, head of natural resources at KPMG in Mumbai, told the FT that diversifying from the Middle East – the source of 70 per cent of India’s oil imports, would be in the interest of India’s energy security.
ONGC Videsh in fact has ventured into many countries, from Iraq to Vietnam. Its arrangements have been the more typical E&P licencing deals rather than the loans and supply contracts that have characterised some of China’s recent foreign oil deals. Building its ties with two of the world’s biggest established oil and gas producers seems a logical step.
Related links:
Resource wars, ahoy (FT Energy Source)
Will China, India and Japan be Venezuela’s saviours? (FT Energy Source)
