Abstract
Energy issues have never been so much at the center of ASEAN concerns as they are today. Greater cooperation for energy security, energy ministers declared in Bangkok in August 2008, was “a pathway to building the ASEAN Economic Community”. But translating aspirations into changes in energy production and consumption patterns and relations between states is a long process. And some commentators also warn that energy anxieties can introduce tensions between countries and even pose the risk of “resources wars”. Intra-regional energy links may also be stymied by government efforts to ensure supply for domestic markets first of all. In Indonesia natural gas and coal producers must now reserve large shares of production for domestic supply. Nowhere is nationalism more evident than in maritime boundary disputes. The contested claims in the South China Sea around the Spratly Islands have come into sharp relief again due to rising energy prices.