Competition between Chinese and Indian Oil & Gas Companies and its Implications for Sino-Indian Bilateral Relations

This article concerns overseas oil & gas assets acquisitions made by Chinese and Indian national oil companies (NOCs) within the last two decades. The paper analyzes whether these companies pursue commercial interests of their shareholders or political will of national governments. To answer this question the author examines Chinese and Indian corporations’ organization and ownership structure foundations of which were laid in the 1990s when both countries’ energy sectors faced structural reforms resulted in transforming archaic governmental organizations into modern competitive state-owned corporations that could compete with the leading Western oil and gas companies. The article also scrutinizes competition between Chinese and Indian companies so as to find out if it is able to affect political relations between Beijing and Delhi, exacerbates existing conflicts or cause the emergence of the new ones. To address this issue the author analyzes some cases of Sino-Indian clash of energy interests in different regions of the world.

China, India, energy sector, energy security, oil and gas