The question of India’s Energy Security constitutes the most important part of India’s economic progress. Analyze India’s energy policy cooperation with West Asian countries

Energy security of a country is referred to as the association between the security of the country and the presence of natural resources for energy consumption. In order to ensure the smooth functioning of the nation’s economy, the availability of cheap energy is essential.

Energy security and economic progress are largely interrelated. And in the case of India, Energy Security constitutes the most important part of the progress of the economy.

Significance of West Asia

India mainly imports oil from west Asian countries like Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arab. Apart from the crude oil, India also had signed some trade agreements for dealing with natural gas from those countries. And at present India took a significant place in terms of the export of refined oil in the world.

• India had signed a treaty with Qatar for natural gas dealing.
• India imports crude oil from Saudi Arab.
• India’s maximum oil import was from Iran before the issue of nuclear deal violations and boycotted by America.
• Iraq replaced Iran in terms of total oil import by India.

Problems

• Dependency over another country for ensuring energy security may create problems in the future. India used to import crude oil from Iran. It was India’s largest oil importer country. Due to diplomatic reasons, India is no longer importing from that particular country and it definitely affected the energy security of India until any other replacement has been found.
• Huge weightage over imports is responsible for internal oil price hike and resist a country from becoming self-sufficient.

Comment

Apart from the west Asian countries, India imports oil from several other countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Brunei, Vietnam, and African countries. So to make a secure place for energy security, the adoption of a diversification policy is needed that will attract other oil exporter countries.

Topics: GS-IV: Ethics and Human Interface