Today hardly any part of the world is untouched by the interplay of oil and international politics. Consumers as well as producers are concerned about the impact of national and international events that increase or restrict the supply of energy. Given that the West Asian region holds the world's largest residual oil and gas resources, the article seeks to analyse the importance of West Asia in the context of the changing geopolitical situation and its impact on the current oil market. The article also focuses on the issue of the petrodollar and looks at its impact on the oil market.

The present energy crisis in Bangladesh is partly due to over-dependence on gas which fulfils more than 70 per cent of its energy needs. The present gas deficit against the national demand on a daily basis is expected to increase further in the future. The crisis will deepen unless a greater share of indigenous coal is included in the energy mix. The geological and social constraints of an over-populated fertile agricultural land area remain an obstacle to large-scale coal mining and this has to be addressed rationally.

The latest addition to the Chinese ‘enigma’ is its oil potential. There have been various accounts, of late, in influential journals and important documents attempting to unravel the mystery surrounding Chinese oil. As it happens, most of them have helped only to further deepen it.

Development prospects and economic growth in Pakistan, like in most other countries, will hinge on securing sustainable energy supplies. The Pakistan government has developed a strategy to enhance its energy production by 2030. This article explores the problems faced by the Pakistan government in optimising its use of indigenous energy resources and the implications that future plans to strengthen its energy security may have for its domestic and foreign policy.

The energy sector since the mid-2000s has acquired top priority in Russian state affairs, but since late 2008 it has also become the epicentre of the economic disaster that still continues to affect Russia. President Medvedev has effectively discarded the notion of Russia as an 'energy super-power' and is now focusing on 'modernisation' for Russia's development. But coherence of this course is problematic because the bulk of new investments must go into the energy sector in order to sustain the high revenues.

Following the recent economic crisis, concerns over the revival of trade protectionism have surfaced, with some countries imposing or threatening to impose highly trade-distorting legislation to help their domestic industries compete in world markets, raising the spectre of a potential trade war. This paper looks at the attempts by some of the developed countries to introduce trade measures using the issue of climate change as a Trojan horse, to ensure that they do not lose out to the emerging economies.

Most of the countries in West Asia have expressed an interest in developing nuclear energy. For them their growing demand of electricity owing to the increasing population, growing industries, their eternal reliance on the desalinated water and environmental protection are the major drivers of their decision to produce nuclear energy. Importantly, they would like to use nuclear energy for domestic consumption and supply oil and gas to earn more revenues.

The article analyses international politics surrounding the Iranian nuclear crisis, and its implications for stakeholders such as the United States and its western allies as well as for emerging market countries including India, China, and Turkey which are especially interested in Iran's energy resources. Given the existence of multiplicity of interests of these countries, often conflicting, the article analyses three possible scenarios of how the Iranian nuclear crisis is likely to be addressed.