Mr Pérez noted that many oil companies in Asia now owned or operated their own oil fields abroad (known as equity oil). He briefly summarized the current oil demand trends in Asia. China, Japan, India and South Korea were the four Asian countries in the list of top ten oil-consuming countries. In terms of oil import, five out of the top ten economies were Asian: Japan, China, South Korea, India and Taiwan. However, not a single Asian country was in the list of top ten oil exporter.

Strategies of Asian Oil Importing Countries

Mr Pérez said that Asia's largest oil consumer China was currently the second largest oil consuming country in the world, and if the trend continued, China could be the largest oil consuming country by 2020. To fuel this thirst, China had been seeking foreign oil assets since 1997 when then Premier Li Peng gave such a mandate to the Chinese oil companies. Its lead companies, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) and CNOOC had projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. China had also been very active in oil diplomacy. President Hu's visits to Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Algeria, Gabon, Russia, Kazakhstan and Australia since assuming post in March 2003 had been all related to oil diplomacy.

Moving on to Asia's second largest oil consumer, Mr Pérez pointed out that it imported 99 per cent of its oil needs. With previously competing Japanese oil firms coordinating its bidding efforts, Japan managed to win a significant block of oil exploration in Libya in October 2005.

As third largest oil-consuming Asian nation, Mr Pérez added that India's biggest problem was the subsidy for the domestic petrol. In 2004 alone, the government spent US$9 billion in subsidizing local petrol prices. Under the former petroleum Minister, Manu Shankar Ayer, India undertook “pipeline diplomacy” with neighbouring countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh. India's leading arm for overseas expansion, OGNC Videsh, had however not been very successful in its overseas forays as they had constantly been out-bidded by Chinese oil companies.