Indian and US concerns ONGC and ConocoPhilips will cooperate to find shale gas in India, Latin America and other parts of the world. Also South Korea fosters energy relationship with the USA, whereas Japan bets on Russia, and China strengthen a energy alliance with Turkmenistan
The Indian tiger needs more gas to foster its position in world economy. On Thursday 11/29 Indian and US concerns ONGC and ConocoPhilips signed an agreement to strengthen the cooperation in finding and developing shale gas fields in India, Latin America and in other parts of the world.
India is betting a lot on unconventional gas sources. According to several studies, Indian lands contain a high potential of shale gas fields.
ONGC and ConocoPhilips agreement is not the first act of cooperation India and the USA establish in energy sector. As Natural Gas Asia reported, Indian energy company India's Petroleum planed the realization of four LNG terminal in order to increase shale liquefied gas import from the USA.
Thanks to shale gas development, the USA overcame Russia, Iran and Qatar in world gas exporters' rating. In addition to India, also South Korea signed agreements with Washington to import 180 thousand of tons of liquified shale gas.
In Asia, a different choice has been made by Japan, which established a cooperation in gas field with Australia, Qatar and Russia.
In exchange to the support to the Southstream - a pipeline planed by Russia in order to increase Europe's dependence on Russian natural gas supplies - Japan obtained the Western Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline's extension to Kozmino.
Differently from Japan, China bet on Turkmenistan's natural gas fields. Chinese companies bought stakes in the fourth world natural gas producer, and planed to carry Turkmen gas directly to China.
Chinese government is also trying to foster a relationship with Russia, after several negotiations ended without a result because of Russia's disagreement on a low gas supplies to China's price.
In addition to contractual aspects, China and Russia did not reach an agreement in the construction of a pipeline to deliver Russian gas directly to China.
Matteo Cazzulani
