A new great game is under way in Myanmar. The huge offshore gas findings stretching from the borders of Bangladesh down to Thailand have resulted in a flurry of diplomatic manoeuvring with China, Thailand and other ASEAN countries as well as United States, India, the European Union, Australia and Russia all playing key roles. The equations are bound to change and many countries, for fear of losing influence with Yangon, are seeking a more 'pragmatic' approach.

Energy security has become a major component of India's national security thinking and policy as its economy has begun to record high rates of growth. The criticality of ensuring access to foreign oil and gas resources will only increase with time as the gap between its demand and its domestic production widens. Furthermore, India's dependence on the seas is particularly overwhelming for its energy 'logistics' in terms of both its domestic supplies and overseas imports.

The central thesis of this article is that the Asian energy consumers would serve their interests well if they look again at their energy frontiers and define them within the contours of Asian energy interdependence rather than triggering an Asian energy race. The three leading Asian consumers, China, Japan and India, are principal actors in the Asian theatre, and their needs, assessments and policies are going to be central in defining the regional energy security agenda. Their current approaches have placed them more as competitors, which could trigger conflict situations.

China's dependence on ship-borne energy resources forms the bedrock of its energy security. Critical to this is the issue of sea lane of communications (SLOCs) safety. SLOC safety is at once a non-conventional security challenge and a military one, which may trigger maritime conflicts. The difficulty in dealing with this challenge is that it is integral to geopolitics and hence subject to complicated major power relations. Geo-strategic politics will increasingly determine Beijing's SLOC policy of political cooperation and military hedging.

Russia's evolving 'energy ideology' and its approach to defining its role in the global energy markets with the particular focus on the interests in and intentions for Asia have drawn considerable attention. Russia's claim for the role of 'global energy security provider', advanced with much aplomb in the context of the G8 chairmanship, is, however, undermined by the stagnation in the oil and gas production and increasing shortages of electricity.

It is now generally accepted that energy security could be significantly enhanced through sustained cross-border exchanges in many regions. In South Asia, however, regional energy security cooperation has seriously remained entangled in geopolitics. The possibility of overexploitation of natural resources such as coal, natural gas and oil reserves and the low level of political confidence in sharing hydro resources have placed serious obstacles to enhancing the level of energy security in the region.

While the efforts of ONGC-Videsh and Indian Oil Corporation are laudable, there is still some distance our firms have to travel to catch up with global competition. I urge our oil and gas PSUs to think big, think creatively and think boldly in this context…They have to be more fleet-footed in making use of global opportunities, both on the supply and demand side, I find China ahead of us in planning for the future in the field of energy security. We can no longer be complacent and must learn to think strategically, to think ahead and to act swiftly and decisively.