Energy Security in Northeast Asia and Multilateral Coopreation in the Energy Sector

摘要

Ais is likely to experience a huge upsurge in energy ue, as the bulk of this increase met through imports. China is already the world's second largest consumer of energy, Japan is by far the leading importer of energy in the region. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are major importers wof liquefied natural gas. For Japan and South Korea, a reliance on LNG and nuclear power was a tol in maintaining energy security after the two oil shocks of the 1970s. Today, however, these tow economies and also China consider importing natural gas from Sakhalin and Eastern Siberia to expand their supply choices, redcue costs of fuels, and control harmful emissions. This creates an opportunity to build large capacity cross-border infrastructure that poromises signficant benefits to industries and individual consumers. However, diversificaiton of uel mix is a slow process, and expensive natural gas projects rquire an integrated approach that coordinates a pipeline construction with the gas feld and distribution grid development. In this respect, he economies of Northeast Asia are yet to develop capacity to receive and consume large volumes of pipeline gas. Moreover, competition from nuclear power, coal and LNG is strong. Also, private sector alone is unlikely to succeed in promoting pipeline gas because of the high costs involved, domestic and international constrations. Government support is needed for these maga-projects to succeed. Natural gas resource development in Northeast Asia requires that the energy security, competition promotion and environmental prot ection are considered collectively and in coordinated manner, not just predominantly national or bilateral issues.