How will Russia handle its former republics?

Topic: The Resource Race in Central Asia

Robert Bryce: Clearly Russia is emerging as a key player in terms of gas in Asia and has been it is obviously been a huge player for a long time. The question is I think how the Russia is going to vie with Azerbaijan with the particularly with Turkmenistan and also have that effects Iran and Iran’s huge gas resources.  So I think gas is clearly the commodity that is going to be key for the foreseeable future and in central Asia oil of course isn’t going away but I see gas emerging particular for Turkmenistan as a key, it is a key commodity and for Pakistan and India gas is a key commodity as well because there are I think there are eventually taking a long time but eventually they are going to do the deal with Iranians that will eventually see the construction of the peace pipe line would carry Iranians gas to Pakistan and India. China is a huge player no matter how you slice it, anyway energy commodity they are going to be an enormous player. Their coal consumption is going to continue rising their banking on coal heavily, they are looking to import lot more natural gas and their oil consumption continues to rise so the key issue I think for China and one that’s overlooked is their electricity consumption. I just did the numbers on this between 1990 and 2006 electricity generation in China increased by 330%, it is the fastest growing electricity generation growth rate on the planet in that time frame followed only by Malaysia, so clearly as China industrializes they are going to be using a whole lot of electricity and for them that is largely going to be in coal coming from coal and but they are also ramping up very quickly and looked on that the nuclear side.

Date Recorded: 03/20/2008