TOKYO - Resource-poor Japan is revving up
its diplomatic drive to strengthen relations with
the oil- and gas-rich countries of Central Asia
amid stubbornly high oil prices.
Japan
invited foreign ministers of Central Asian nations
to talks early last month. And in a more
significant move that highlights how passionately
Japan is wooing the Central Asian nations, Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi plans to visit the
region in late August, becoming the first Japanese
premier to do so.
He and the leaders of
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as well as possibly
others in the region, are expected among other
topics to
discuss
economic cooperation, anti-terrorism measures and
cultural and personnel exchanges.
Japan's
energized diplomatic drive in Central Asia comes
at a time when Tokyo is implementing its new
energy strategy aimed at ensuring stable oil, gas
and other resource supplies in the long term to
feed the world's second-largest economy.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry released its new national energy strategy
at the end of May. It calls for, among other
things, strengthening ties with resource-rich
countries, promoting nuclear energy, and securing
energy resources abroad through the fostering of
more powerful energy companies. The new strategy
specifically calls for increasing the ratio of
"Hinomaru oil", or oil developed and imported
through domestic producers, from the current 15%
to 40% by 2030.
Japan has also turned to a
free-trade agreement as a foreign-policy tool to
beef up ties with resource-rich countries. Japan
will soon launch FTA negotiations with the
six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, for instance.
Japan imports almost all of its crude oil, nearly
90% of which comes from the Middle East. The GCC
groups Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates. The grouping
accounts for more than 70% of Japanese crude-oil
imports. In the upcoming FTA negotiations with the
GCC, Japan will seek a written pledge by the
grouping to preferentially supply crude oil to
Japan, even in emergencies such as war.
Japan's new diplomatic focus on Central
Asia also comes at a time when the United States,
Russia and China are all flexing their political
muscles in the resource-rich but volatile region,
competing in an attempt to secure energy. To
ensure its energy security, Tokyo is desperate to
diversify its hydrocarbon sources in order to
reduce its heavy reliance on the Middle East for
crude-oil imports. As such, an obvious choice for
the country is to turn to the Central Asian and
Caucasian nations.
Burgeoning dialogue
framework Japan began to turn its eyes to
Central Asia soon after regional countries became
independent with the 1991 demise of the Soviet
Union.
In early June, Japanese Foreign
Minister Taro Aso invited his counterparts from
Central Asian countries for the second
ministerial-level round of the "Central Asia Plus
Japan" dialogue. They agreed to strengthen
cooperation in fighting terrorism and ensuring the
safety of regional oil supplies. Aso and his
opposite numbers from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, as well as Afghanistan
as an observer, approved an action plan that also
calls for joint efforts to combat
drug-trafficking, fight poverty, promote human
rights and boost trade in the region.
Tokyo aims to build roads and pipelines
from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean via
Afghanistan to carry oil and natural gas for
imports into Japan. That's why Tokyo invited
Afghanistan to the the talks. The action plan
adopted there calls for enhanced cooperation,
including Japan's support for road construction to
ensure a smooth route from Central Asia to the
Indian Ocean.
During his planned visit to
Central Asia late next month, Koizumi is expected
to call on regional countries to accelerate
working-level talks to flesh out the Japanese idea
of a new oil-and-gas route from Central Asia to
the Indian Ocean via Afghanistan. The action plan
adopted in June stipulates the Central Asian
nations' support for Japan's bid for a permanent
seat on the United Nations Security Council. Japan
is also exploring the possible first summit of
leaders between Japan and Central Asia under the
framework of the Central Asia Plus Japan dialogue.
The dialogue, which also involves
Turkmenistan, was launched at Tokyo's initiative
in August 2004, when then foreign minister Yoriko
Kawaguchi visited Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Japan's
forays in Central Asia Among projects in
the region, Japan's Itochu Oil Exploration and
Inpex Corp have a 3.92% and 10% interest,
respectively, in a production-sharing agreement
for three fields in the southern Caspian Sea. The
Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields are about 120
kilometers southeast of Baku, Azerbaijan. The
Japanese government-backed Inpex also has an 8.33%
interest in the Kashagan oilfield in Kazakhstan.
Itochu Oil Exploration and Inpex also
participated in the consortium that built the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, with interests of
3.4% and 2.5%, respectively. The Japanese
government-affiliated Japan Bank for International
Cooperation (JBIC) also signed a loan agreement of
up to US$580 million for the link in early 2004.
The BTC connects Azerbaijan's vast Caspian Sea
oilfields to the Turkish Mediterranean port of
Ceyhan via Tbilisi, Georgia. It has further been
suggested that oil from Kazakhstan could also be
transported through the pipe. The US strongly
supported the project, seeing it as a way to
loosen Russia's energy grip on the South Caucasus.
Oil and gas are not the only resources
that whet Japan's appetite. Japan is also stepping
up its drive to secure uranium abroad as global
demand for nuclear power rises amid spikes in oil
and gas prices and growing environmental concerns.
Nuclear power plants generate much less carbon
dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas widely blamed
for global warming, than coal-fired facilities.
Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar
power generation are not available in sufficient
amounts - or at affordable prices. Japan is
already the world's third-largest nuclear-power
nation in terms of the number of civilian nuclear
plants in operation.
Uranium prices are
climbing as energy-hungry China and India are
stepping up construction of nuclear power plants
to fuel their high-flying economies, while some
industrialized countries, including the US and
Britain, are moving to build new nuclear plants
after many years of suspension following nuclear
accidents at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979
and Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government, which
attaches great importance to nuclear power as a
key to ensuring national energy security, has also
been considering increased assistance to help
domestic firms in the increasingly intensifying
global competition for fuel at nuclear power
plants. Among those measures are financial aid and
more investment-insurance coverage by
government-affiliated organizations.
New Great Game Japan's
acceleration of dialogue is widely seen as
reflecting a desire to play a greater geopolitical
role, not only in Central Asia but also in Eurasia
as a whole, while countering the growing influence
of Russia and China in the region.
In a
development that raised eyebrows in the United
States, Japan's most important ally, China issued
a joint statement with Russia and four Central
Asian countries at a summit of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization a year ago calling for an
early withdrawal of US forces from Central Asia.
This fits into Moscow's efforts to reduce
- or at least compete with - US unilateralism. In
particular, Russia is determined to maintain its
hold over the former Soviet states, as can be seen
through its support of Belarussian President
Alexander Lukashenko and Uzbek President Islam
Karimov despite Western criticism of their
regimes. Meanwhile, Japan's ties with both Russia
and China are far from easy over a variety of
issues.
Japan has frequently locked horns
with China over natural-gas reserves in the East
China Sea. The Sino-Japanese rivalry over energy
resources shows signs of spreading to the Middle
East. In early 2004, Japan and Iran signed a $2
billion deal to develop Iran's massive Azadegan
oilfield. But with international tensions rising
over Tehran's nuclear program, there are growing
concerns in Tokyo about how the nuclear crisis
will play out. China won rights to the Yadavaran
oilfield in Iran. Many analysts point out that
should Japan be forced to give up the Azadegan
project as part of international pressure on
Tehran, Beijing could step in to replace Tokyo.
China became a net importer of crude oil
in 1993, and in 2003 overtook Japan as the world's
second-largest oil consumer - with the US secure
in the top spot. China now depends on imports for
more than 40% of its oil.
China is
aggressively making inroads into Central Asia.
China National Petroleum took over for $4.2
billion last year the Canada-based oil firm
PetroKazakhstan, which operates solely in
Kazakhstan. China and Kazakhstan also inaugurated
a 1,000-kilometer oil pipeline in December to send
oil to western China, the first major export
pipeline from the landlocked Central Asian
republic that does not cross Russia. Eventually
another pipeline will link up with this one from
the Caspian region in western Kazakhstan, where
the huge new Kashagan oilfield is being developed.
Meanwhile, Japan has reviewed and
overhauled its ODA (overseas development
assistance) policy recently in an attempt to make
financial assistance a more effective
foreign-policy tool in the pursuit of its
strategic interests.
Japan will have a
difficult time securing the necessary energy
resources from Central Asia. The country lacks the
sheer military force that the US, Russia and China
can all bring to influence events in the region.
But the cash reserves that Tokyo can offer provide
the country with substantial sway, and Japan's
policy of pushing dialogue is likely to afford it
the means of tapping oil and gas reserves.
Hisane Masaki is a Tokyo-based
journalist, commentator and scholar on
international politics and economy. Masaki's
e-mail address isyiu45535@nifty.com.
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