Bangkok Post : Asean joins with East Asia over oil plan

ENERGY

Southeast Asian nations have joined East Asian nations to draft a road map for a regional oil stock to avoid disruption in supply, said Dr Weerawat Chantanakome, energy policy planning councillor for the Ministry of Energy.

The plan concerns the Asean Petroleum Security Agreement (APSA), inked by Asean countries in March to design an appropriate level of inventory of crude for member countries. The expected completion date is 2010.

"How much stock each country will store depends on their will, as each country has its own conditions, level of development and market requirements," said Dr Weerawat at an energy security meeting in Bangkok held by the International Energy Agency (IEA) yesterday.

Possible options for use as the regional stock include a natural gas pipeline or a power transmission grid designated for use in that region.

For example, the Asean co-development project, a 2,000-kilometre oil and gas pipeline network worth US$1.5 billion, will travel from the west coast of Burma to Yunnan province in China, and will be used as an inventory for crude from the Middle East to China.

Surong Bulakul, senior executive vice-president for PTT, said Thailand learned a lesson about the risk of brownouts last summer as a result of the unexpected drop of natural gas output from the Mataban Sea.

"An emergency can happen with any country, but for any one country to prepare for this, they need a massive budget as it requires development of human resources, regulation improvement and fuel diversification," he said.

Didier Houssin, IEA director of energy markets and security, suggested Asean look at what happened when Russia, the major natural gas supplier for Europe, had a dispute with the Ukraine, where its pipeline runs to reach the continent. The whole region was damaged, with a three-week suspension of gas transmission.

"We need to secure supply, because the losses from the gas suspension were unbelievable," he said.

"Because the whole continent depended on a single source [of energy], when it was cut, it was unavoidable for the whole continent to feel the pinch," Dr Houssin said.

Now European countries have learned to develop their own storage facilities for the next crisis, he said.