Abstract
Russia’s gas reserves are the world’s largest, comprising 31 percent of known global reserves, in contrast with its oil po- tential, which ranks seventh on the global scale. Already the largest supplier of natu- ral gas to Europe, where its exports have reached the saturation point, Russia will become the major source of gas for all or most of Northeast Asia within a decade if promising negotiations for gas pipelines from eastern Siberia and Sakhalin Island reach fruition.
There is a catch. Though these pipelines could greatly enhance regional stability and provide a cheap alternative to oil imported from the Middle East, the United States seems uneasily wary of pipeline networks in Northeast Asia. In the case of Korea, the Bush administration for ideological reasons actively opposes pipelines crossing from North to South Korea. This rules out par- ticipation of Exxon-Mobil, a U.S. firm, in a projected pipeline from its gas fields off the coast of Sakhalin. Yet U.S. support for such a pipeline could be the key to easing the confrontation between the Bush administra- tion and North Korea over nuclear weapons.
More broadly, the very idea of a tightly knit Northeast Asia has alarmed some U.S. analysts. “Pipelines that promote greater regional integration in Northeast Asia,” warned a National Bureau of Asian Research study, “might exclude U.S. involvement ex- cept in a marginal way… and could evolve into regional blocs.”1 Conceivably, if overall U.S. relations with Russia, China, and Ja- pan should seriously deteriorate, this could prove a prescient warning. However, in the absence of such a sharp downturn, the United States would benefit from a cooling off of regional tensions that could enable Washington to scale down a costly U.S. mil- itary presence. Access to cheaper energy would weaken incentives for expanding ci- vilian nuclear power programs that could be converted to producing weapons. Moreover, to the extent that Northeast Asia can satisfy its petroleum needs from indigenous sources and from Russia, competition with the United States for access to existing sources, pushing prices up, would be reduced.
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