Currently most of the oil and gas supplies from north Asia are supplied to Europe.

India on Monday proposed a pan-Asian gas grid for comprehensive cooperation to exploit the hydrocarbon potential in the region. "We need to shed the confrontationist approach and create a pan-Asian forum on the lines of the Organization of African Unity and the European Union and leverage the power of offshore and onshore gas for the benefit of our continent," Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar told the 3rd Gas Buyers' Summit.
"We need to convert the relationship between buyers and sellers into a community of partners to have a common approach to development of gas."
Around 25 countries are participating in the two-day conference.
As India looks to secure gas supplies from different regions, the minister urged an Asian dialogue to help access gas supplies from Iran in the west, Myanmar in the east and Central Asia in the north.
An Asian gas union would help to develop mutual interests through flow of investment in creating infrastructure, taking inspiration from initiatives being taken at the international level, he said.
Seeking an Asian gas perspective to energy security, Aiyar stressed that 55 per cent of the known global gas reserves were in the region while the greatest demand growth was also in Asia. China and India registered the largest growth at around six percent per annum, hindustantimes.com reported.
"Japan, South Korea, China and India are flush with foreign exchange and are in a position to invest in the gas producing countries for development of gas infrastructure," said Aiyar.
"If we linked trade with investment, that could create a commonality of interest," said the minister.
He also urged de-linking Asian gas economy from the Asian oil economy, with gas emerging as the favored fuel of the 21st century with technology making it feasible to substitute oil with gas.
The minister drew attention to India's efforts to forge an Asian oil community for energy security in the region. He expressed the hope that the first energy summit in January that brought together the principal buyers with major suppliers from West Asia would see further progress as India plans a parallel dialogue with suppliers from Central and North Asian countries.
Currently most of the oil and gas supplies from north Asia are supplied to Europe.
"A gas grid for the Asian region would work to the advantage of the whole continent," Aiyar said. "Linkages between energy and economic growth are symbiotic."
Explaining the change in India's energy policy, the minister stressed: "We need to look beyond the national gas grid to a continental gas grid.
"If we think of linking up both for supply of pipeline gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG), it would be a win-win situation for everybody."

Still, the potential is high for US waters, even at many of the nation's thousands of dams and rivers.

Since ancient times poets have revered the power of the seas. Now energy companies and coastal cities like New York and San Francisco are aiming to tap ocean waves and tidal currents as abundant sources of electricity.
Whether captured by big buoys bobbing on sea swells, or by submerged turbines spinning with the ebb and flow of the tides, the energy potential of moving water, or marine power, is beginning to turn heads in the energy world.
"I'm pretty bullish on the technology," said Robert Thresher, a wind power researcher at the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Thresher said water power has several advantages over wind power, including having a lower profile. One day marine power could catch on like wind power, currently the fastest growing alternative energy, he said.
"It doesn't have the visibility of a wind turbine device," he said. Some critics, famously Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, have fought offshore wind farms because they say a forest of tall turbines spoils views of the horizon.
Another advantage, Thresher said, is that water currents are more energy-dense than wind currents--about 1,000 times more.
"My wind power brethren say their turbines generate more power when it's humid," said Trey Taylor, president of Washington-based Verdant Power, which makes underwater turbines. "I like to say, 'You can't get any more humid than water."'
Marine power is in its infancy. But an experimental wave project run last summer by Ocean Power Delivery Ltd in the Scottish Orkneys successfully provided power to 500 homes through Scottish Power (SPW.L).
Marine power research has received millions of dollars worth of government subsidies in Scotland, but the United States currently has no federal program, yahoo.com reported.
Still, the potential is high for US waters, even at many of the nation's thousands of dams and rivers. "Just below the Niagara Falls is a fantastic source of energy," Taylor said.
The technology is so young that fish protectors Trout Unlimited have not formed an opinion on wave power. But marine conservation group Surfrider Foundation is "guardedly optimistic" about a system of buoys planned by New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies, said spokesman Matt McClain.

East River, Golden Gate, Gulf Stream
This May, Verdant Power is scheduled to place as many as six underwater turbines on the bottom of New York City's East River to supply power to a food market on Roosevelt Island in the river, which separates Manhattan from the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens.
Environmental regulators are examining the plans and weighing possible problems for fish and other marine life.
Verdant says turbines are unlikely to harm animals because their blades are dull, widely spaced, and turn slowly. The company is seeking the go-ahead to install as many as 200 to 300 turbines in the East River.
River debris also is a concern, but crews could change the turbines frequently, according to Taylor.
The expanded project would produce five to 10 megawatts of electricity at an initial cost of $20 million, but New York state as a whole, Taylor said, could produce about 1,000 megawatts, or power for about 1 million homes. The fuel source is free.
Roger Bedard of think tank Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, said the amount of wave energy available off the coasts of the United States is nine to 10 times the energy currently generated by the country's hydroelectric dams.
The city of San Francisco is studying harnessing the power of offshore waves as well as ocean tides that surge beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. It's looking at clean power as an option to replace two old power stations fired by natural gas. "The city has an advantage because we sit at the tip of a peninsula with water on three sides," said Jared Blumenfeld, director of San Francisco's Environment Department. "We can do what makes sense for our geography."

Biofuels and wind power are the best bets for alternative energy sources as oil and natural gas prices rise even though the economics of green fuels are still far from viable, analysts say.
The search for sustainable energy sources has intensified as oil prices simmer around $50 a barrel while governments try to meet commitments under the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which comes into force on February 16.
Biodiesel which is made from vegetable oils and ethanol which is made from sugar or grains could be used as a cleaner fuel for vehicles and industry.
Wind power is making headway in the electricity market, with generation nearly quadrupling globally in the past five years, according to Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based research group.
But biodiesel remains 50 percent more expensive than petrol, meaning oil prices would have to climb above $70 a barrel for biofuels to be competitive with petrol.
And the expansion of high-cost wind power will depend on more subsidies to allow it to compete with gas and coal, Reuters reported.
"Oil would have to get to perhaps $70-$80 a barrel for bio to be competitive, but there is no clear agreement on this figure," Peter Clery, chairman of the British Association for Biofuels and Oils (BABFO), told Reuters.
"Biodiesel and bioethanol from UK feedstocks is still probably close to twice the fossil fuel figure," he said.
Oil futures spiked to a record $55 a barrel in New York last year, creating worries over economic growth. US crude was trading at $47 a barrel on Friday.
"Right now nobody expects energy prices to stay as high as they are over the long run -- if people did begin to expect that then they would be more willing to make investment in renewable energy on that basis," said Steve Taub of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

EU Backs Biodiesel
Biodiesel received a boost last year from the European Union which set a target that fuels should contain two percent of biofuels by 2005, rising to 5.75 percent by 2010. But incentives differ across the bloc.
BABFO's Clery said the UK biofuel market suffered from a lack of government support compared to other countries.
France recently unveiled details of its plans to treble the country's biofuel output within three years, while Germany last year permitted oil companies to mix biodiesel with conventional fuels up to a maximum of five percent biodiesel content.
By 2010, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts up to a five percent displacement of motor gasoline use with biofuel worldwide, if policy initiatives are fully implemented.

Wind Power Breezes On
The majority of the world's wind generation is in Europe, where wind power capacity rose by a fifth to 34,205 megawatts last year on the back of strong growth in Spain and Germany.
"The costs of gas-fired generation are still significantly cheaper than wind," said Jeremy Thomas at Ernst & Young, putting average UK onshore wind power costs at 36 pounds ($66.96) per megawatt hour versus 24 pounds for gas.
The British Wind Energy Association predicts that wind will meet 7.5 percent of UK's electricity needs by 2010, representing three-quarters of the UK's target of 10 percent power from green sources, at a cost of seven billion pounds of new investment.
"In an area where there is still a lot of technological change, the investment risk is still high," said David Hone, climate change adviser at oil major Shell.
"You need new technologies and new ideas coming into the manufacturing process and the scale of manufacturing to bring the price down."
The share of world energy provided by renewables increased modestly to 5.5 percent in 2001 from 4.6 percent in 1970, according to the IEA. Shell predicts renewables will provide one third of the energy mix by 2050.

Oil Search Ltd., Papua New Guinea's biggest oil and gas producer, agreed with Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co. and Itochu Corp. to start preparing to build a $500 million plant to supply a diesel substitute to Japan.
The Japanese partners will begin detailed feasibility and marketing work for the proposed plant, while Oil Search starts engineering, the Port Moresby-based company said in a statement. The plant, planned near Port Moresby, could start up in 2008.
Oil Search has been seeking ways to develop gas reserves in Papua New Guinea amid a delay in Exxon Mobil Corp.'s proposed $3 billion project to pipe gas to eastern Australia. Oil Search, Mitsubishi Gas and Itochu signed an initial agreement last April to develop plans for the plant. Oil Search is also studying potential compressed natural gas and gas-to-liquids projects, Bloomberg.com reported.
"This fits in with Oil Search's scheme to develop not just one potential gas project in PNG," said John Colnan, a resources analyst at Shaw Stockbroking Ltd. in Sydney. "It confirms that the PNG Gas Project may turn out not to be a pipeline, but an LNG plant or a methanol/chemicals plant, because the cost of the pipeline may be too prohibitive."
Shares in Oil Search rose 5 cents, or 2.5 percent, to A$2.06 on the exchange.
The plant will use gas from fields in Papua New Guinea to produce methanol and dimethyl ether, used as a clean substitute for diesel. The agreement will allow the partners to start negotiating to buy as much as 86 petajoules (81 billion cubic feet) a year of gas for as long as 20 years, Oil Search said.
The plant would likely start up in 2008 or 2009, Oil Search Managing Director Peter Botten said in an interview.
A decision would be made whether to build the plant in early 2006, at about the same time as the decision is made for the pipeline, he said.

German chemical group BASF AG and Russia's Gazprom want to expand their successful cooperation by launching further energy projects, and make an important contribution to securing Europe's energy supplies by producing, transporting and trading natural gas, BASF said Sunday.
That was the outcome of top-level discussions between the Chairmen of the Boards of Executive Directors of OAO Gazprom, Alexey Miller, and of BASF AG, Juergen Hambrecht, held in Moscow on Saturday (Feb. 12, 2005).
The talks focused specifically on the construction of the North European Gas Pipeline (NEGP) and progress of the German-Russian joint venture, OOO Achimgaz( 50% Wintershall, 50% Gazprom). For Gazprom, this joint venture represents a model of how foreign partners can cooperate in gas production in Russia. Because of the positive experience made in their cooperation, the development of additional deposits was also discussed.
"We want to further strengthen our partnership and the very intensive and successful cooperation that we have enjoyed for 14 years", explains Hambrecht. Over 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas have been supplied to customers in Germany alone since the Russian-German joint venture WINGAS (65% Wintershall / 35% Gazprom) was formed. WINGAS now has around EUR3 billion invested in the expansion of its natural gas trading business, and Gazprom's share in this venture is one of the largest investments that a Russian company has to date made in Germany. Only recently, WINGAS topped up and extended its gas supply contracts with Gazprom subsidiary OOO Gazexport to the end of 2030, thus securing the flow of considerable volumes of Russian gas for households in Germany and Western Europe. This confirms the long-term interest of the world's largest natural gas producer in the sales markets in Germany and Europe, money.iwon.com reported.
Since volumes produced in the North Sea are declining while demand is rising, Russian natural gas is becoming increasingly important for Central and Western Europe. Gazprom has maintained reliable gas supplies to its customers for over 30 years, without significant disruptions, not even at the height of the Cold War. "This steadfast cooperation over the decades forms the basis for mutual trust", explains Hambrecht.
In addition to reliable supplies of Russian natural gas, the Achimgaz joint venture and other joint production projects are to make further important contributions to supplying natural gas to Germany and Europe in the future. "Our two successful sectors, Exploration and Production and Natural Gas Trading, complement each other perfectly in our Gas for Europe concept", says Hambrecht. This means exploring for and producing new gas in and around Europe and being involved in creating the connecting infrastructure to take the gas to customers in Europe.
The strategic partnership between Wintershall and Gazprom has recently been expanded to international exploration and production projects, for example in North Africa. "In future projects we want to continue to make full use of the strengths of our two companies, pool our competencies and fairly share risks and earnings", says Hambrecht.