Countries Brace for Future
Global Oil Price Hikes

Taking steps to reduce dependence on fossil fuel

Countries around the world are struggling to cope with crude price hikes that are forecast to prevail in the future as they turn to mid- and long-term strategies like the reinforcement of mandatory energy conservation and acceleration of substitute energy development.
On a short-term aspect, countries are putting more energy into cutting down on their dependence on fossil fuel by conducting energy conservation campaigns.
The steps that countries are taking to counteract crude oil price hikes in the future are contained in reports on the latest developments commercial attaches'of Korea's overseas diplomatic missions have collected from their residing countries.
In the United States, the President Bush administration last April 25 came up with a package of countermeasures to deal with crude oil price hikes, calling for ensuring price stability, improving automobile mileage, expanding the supply of crude oil and gasoline and acceleration of substitute energy development.
U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are expected to beep up diplomatic relationships in the energy sector through bilateral talks with such major oil exporting countries as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
Citing three factors - a rise in global demand, supply limits and the effects from hurricanes and other geopolitical dangers, the U.S. Energy Department predicts that crude oil price hikes will persist until 2007.
The U.S. parliament has legislated diverse energy-related laws, including the one on banning unfair oil prices hikes, approved by the House of Representatives last May, while President George W. Bush proposed an energy plan suggesting a call for substituting for 75 percent of crude oil imports by 2025.
Besides, an energy conservation drive, dubbed "101 Easy Ways to Save Energy"has been put into practice since last October as calls for the consumer, corporate and public sectors'participation in energy saving efforts have been mounting.
General Electric, a U.S. multinational company, for instance, has introduced a new energy management strategy "Ecomagination"that embodies its attempt to position itself as a 'green'company. It calls for, among others, a shift into considering the environment as profit sources rather than costs and expanding investments into clean energy technologies.
Senator Energy Committee Chairman Peter Domenici held a public hearing on the development of oil shale in Colorado, a production base of oil shale, emerging as a next-generation substitute energy source amid crude oil price hikes. The U.S. Energy Department estimates oil shale reserves at about 800 billion barrels, equivalent to three times as much as oil reserves in Saudi Arabia.
The Japanese government on May 30 announced a new national energy strategy calling for an improvement of energy consumption per unit of GDP by more than 30 percent by 2030 over the year 2003, reducing its dependence rate on petroleum from 47 percent in 2003 to less than 40 percent and raising the percentage of nuclear power from 29 percent in 2004 to 30 percent-40 percent.
Japan has revised the Energy Conservation Act to make energy savings in industry, transportation and building sectors mandatory. The Japanese government has revived its own petroleum development goal, which was revoked in 2000 in consideration of low crude oil prices.
In China, the 11th national development plan between 2006 and 2010 has contained 10 major tasks on energy-saving and substituting for petroleum. China aims to improve energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent by 2010 over the year 2005.
China focuses on such measures as petroleum import diversification, expanding investments into overseas petroleum exploration and strategic petroleum stockpiling as key actions to deal with increasing oil prices. nw