How India’s hunger for oil could transform the Middle East – By Russia Today Staff (Russia Today) / Feb 17 2021
India’s rapidly growing oil demand and good relations with Washington make it a key element in US’s new strategy to counter China’s rapidly increasing influence in the Middle East.
The release of a major report last week by the International Energy Agency (IEA) highlighting that India will make up the biggest share of energy demand growth from now until 2040 – ahead of China – comes at just the right time for the US’s new strategy to counter China’s rapidly increasing influence in the Middle East. The details of the IEA’s ‘India Energy Outlook 2021’ only add further weight to the credibility of the US’s attempt to portray India as a viable economic and energy-consuming alternative end user to China for Middle East oil and gas producers that side with the new US-Israel-Arab state alliances.
Specifically, according to the IEA report, India’s energy consumption is expected to nearly double as its gross domestic product expands to an estimated US$8.6 trillion by 2040 under its current national policy scenario (the equivalent of adding another economy the size of Japan to the world economy in less than 20 years). Particularly of note to Middle Eastern hydrocarbons producers will be the projection that India’s oil demand is expected to rise to at least 8.7 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2040 from about 5 million bpd in 2019, while its natural gas needs are projected to more than triple to 201 billion cubic metres. In explicit potential export dollars terms for Middle East oil and gas producers, India is set to see its net dependence on oil imports increase to more than 90 percent by 2040 from the current 75 percent, according to the IEA, and its net gas import dependency increase to around 61 percent by 2025 from just 20 percent only 10 years ago
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