How India plans to reduce its dependence on Middle East oil By Prakash March 24, 2021 March 24, 2021 NEW DELHI: India is currently looking at new ways to reduce its oil dependence from the Middle East after the Opec (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) ignored New Delhi’s call for higher supplies to calm international crude prices. Just like California imports fossil-fuel energy from Arizona and Nevada when their green energy is not sufficient, the United States will return to a dependence on Middle Eastern oil … The economy is dominated by large, state-owned companies and by conglomerates run by influential families. Among the projects supported by KACST is the Saudi Human Genome Program, which seeks to identify the genes responsible for genetic diseases by sequencing the genomes of 100,000 Saudi participants. Ironically, given that the long-term goal of research for the Gulf states is to free themselves from oil dependence, the drop in the oil price has reduced the amount of money available to fund science. INDIA. “We believe Saudi Arabia needs to be fairly self-reliant.”. The QNRF has also funded research projects that led to the discovery of five exoplanets that bear the country's name (Qatar-1b to Qatar-5b), as well as a collaboration with CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory, to upgrade the Large Hadron Collider. India has reduced the share of crude oil imports from the Middle East in recent years. The NSTIP is implemented by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), which is charged with funding academic science at institutions throughout the kingdom. Elsewhere in the Gulf region, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia are also striving to give an octane boost to their research and development (R&D) enterprises. “Those universities came to Qatar because the country wanted to move very quickly into the future,” explains Laith Abu-Raddad, a public-health specialist at WCM-Q. Internet Explorer). Researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), for example, are studying energy-efficient membranes for water desalination and developing metal–organic materials to offer clean-energy alternatives, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and remediate chemical and biological agents. Few successful companies have emerged from academic research, he says. ISSN 1476-4687 (online). volume 537, pagesS6–S7(2016)Cite this article. Growing dependence on the Middle East means further enrichment of the corrupt and dictatorial regimes in the Persian Gulf and continued access of terrorist groups to a viable financial network which allows them to remain a lethal threat to the West. The drop in oil prices that began in June 2014 put all of the Gulf economies “in a state of shock”, says chemical engineer Steve Griffiths, vice-president for research at Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi. KACST also has its own research laboratories, says Anas Alfaris, a KACST faculty member who chairs the task force handling the R&D strategy in the NTP. As well as Weill Cornell, there are seven other US and European universities in Qatar. ... as we have seen across the Middle East, it is pretty difficult to deliver internal stability. By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate. This information is shared with social media, sponsorship, analytics, and other vendors or service providers. (2017). Advanced Water Technology, an arm of KACST, and the Spanish company Abengoa agreed to jointly build the plant, which is estimated to cost $130 million and is expected to be completed by early 2017. Louise Sarant 1 Nature volume 537, pages S6–S7(2016)Cite this article Nature 537, S6–S7 (2016). You can adjust your cookie choices in those tools at any time. India’s oil demand has increased by 25% over the past seven years, more than any other major buyer and surpasses Japan as the world’s third largest oil importer and consumer. The Masdar Institute, where researchers are working on alternative energy, environmental sustainability and clean technology, is emblematic of Abu Dhabi's efforts to broaden its economy in preparation for a post-oil age. “Large streams of revenues have been steered towards sectors where competition is not based on oil and gas,” he says. India's oil demand has risen by 25% in the last seven years - more than any other major buyer - and the country has surpassed Japan as the world's third-largest oil importer and consumer. The Middle East: An end to oil dependency. Reuters - NEW DELHI (Reuters) - When India’s government last month asked refiners to speed up diversification and reduce dependence on the Middle East - days after OPEC+ said it would maintain production cuts - it sent a message about its clout and foreshadowed changes to the world’s energy maps. The introduction of legislation to liberalize the market and break monopolies in certain areas would encourage investments in science, Mahroum says. The second, Alfaris says, involves funding areas in which “we believe the kingdom needs to be fairly self-reliant”, such as health, agriculture, food research, transportation, construction and information technology. The country has already curtailed its dependence on the Middle East from … It was a … We're much less dependent on Middle East oil than we used to be, yes, but not entirely so—and in fact, we can't be. Dependence on Middle Eastern oil is far higher in Japan than in other nations. It would also necessitate increased Western military presence in the region to ensure access to oil. Terrorism will not decline in the Middle East if the US ceases to buy oil, because terrorism is not funded by oil money. To obtain Louise Sarant is a freelance science writer based in Cairo. What will the end of oil dependence mean for geopolitics? The country has already curbed its reliance on the Middle East from more than 64 percent of imports in 2016 to below 60 percent in 2019. That trend reversed in 2020, however, when the pandemic pummelled fuel demand and forced Indian refiners to make committed oil purchases from the Middle East … Three years later, he published a draft genome of a date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) (E. K. Al-Dous et al. Given that Saudi Arabia still derives 80% of its budget revenue and 90% of its export earnings from the petroleum sector, it's not surprising that two-thirds of papers published in high-impact journals by Saudi researchers focus on chemistry. The Gulf countries “would like to spend money on R&D but I don't see any kind of diversification of the economy, in the sense of establishing industries that are not reliant on government funds and viable on a free-market level”, Henderson says. NEW DELHI: India is currently looking at new ways to reduce its oil dependence from the Middle East after the Opec (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) ignored New Delhi's call for higher supplies to calm international crude prices. Dubai started investing in logistics, airline and port infrastructure in the 1970s. So U.S. dependence on Middle East oil has fallen, but production of Middle Eastern oil has risen by about 5 million BPD in the past decade. According to Sami Mahroum, director of the Innovation and Policy Initiative at the graduate business school INSEAD in Abu Dhabi, this tightening may be temporary. Masdar has about 25 R&D collaborations with UAE companies and an equal number with international organizations, Griffiths says, in fields including energy, water, logistics, aerospace and defence, metals and mining, and semiconductors. If we deplete the oil reserves outside the Middle East before we deplete the reserves in the Middle East, we will become in time more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than ever before. The first includes funding fields in which the country could become a global leader — oil and gas, solar energy, water desalination and advanced materials. the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in 29, 521–527; 2011). With the current low price of oil, countries in the region are seeking investments with a clear near-term return. In May 2012, QNRF granted $4.5 million to Malek's date-palm research as part of its National Priorities Research Program. Every year, the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development reportedly allocates US$320 million to run six campuses of US universities. And there's little question that, as oil supplies dwindle, these countries will need a new engine to drive their prosperity. Dubai especially so, because it does not have bountiful natural resources like the adjacent state of Abu Dhabi. Its second phase, which started in 2011, focuses on mission-driven research that addresses Qatar's grand challenges — health care and water, and cyber and energy security — to ultimately create tangible knowledge assets such as intellectual property, Al-Taie says. “It would drive more people to be trained in science and technology, and that as a consequence, the scientific output of the region would increase significantly.”. Christian Henderson, who is researching the political economy of Saudi Arabia at the SOAS University of London, explains that the strategies that were put in place to diversify the Gulf economies occurred at a time when oil was priced at $100 a barrel (twice as high as in 2016), and money to invest in massive R&D projects was plentiful. Of a date palm ( Phoenix dactylifera ) ( E. K. Al-Dous et al to an economy without dependence. 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