Mr Bukhard outlined key trends and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region and deliberated on three issues: energy security, increasing oil prices, and global energy scenarios.

Energy Security

Mr Burkhard illustrated the significance of energy security as a global issue and the need to understand it along with poverty and terrorism. Referring to historical examples, the speaker emphasized that energy security was a much broader issue today. Against the backdrop of the International Energy Agency's (IEA) role to manage oil supplies since the 1973 oil crisis (wherein prices quadrupled overnight) and in face of Middle Eastern turbulence, Mr Bukhard noted that energy security was narrowly understood through the lens of supply management and argued that a broader understanding of energy security was essential.

Mr Burkhard highlighted the growth in natural gas industry and that liquefied natural gas (LNG) was fast emerging as a globally traded commodity thus facilitating expansion of global trade. The growing importance of this source of energy will be led by the gradual opening up of North American markets to natural gas, a process that its European and Northeast Asian counterparts had already begun. Another major change was in regard to the energy infrastructure wherein a much broader perspective of energy security was being understood. Consequently, governments were focusing on all aspects of the energy supply chain, from production to delivery.

Of special concern for Mr Burkhard was how China and India viewed energy security and their initiatives to gain access to different sources of supply. He noted that there was a significant shift in these countries from self-sufficiency to dependence on global markets. In less than a decade, China had moved from self-reliance to dependence on external sources with more than half of its energy supplies being imported.

Mr Burkhard stated that the notion of energy independence and self-sufficiency, whether in the United States or in Singapore was in conflict with reality wherein there was a complex interdependence.