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REGIONALISING RESOURCE SECURITY IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC: THE

CHALLENGE OF ECONOMIC NATIONALISM

Jeffrey D. Wilson

Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Australia

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Australian Journal of International Affairs,

2015, 69(2): 224-245. (© Taylor & Francis). Available online at

http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10357718.2014.978741

Abstract: In recent years, efforts to institutionalise resource security cooperation in the Asia-

Pacific region have intensified. Soaring world prices for minerals and energy have seen a range

of resource security strategies launched – through ASEAN, the ASEAN+3, APEC and the East

Asia Summit – all of which aim to promote intergovernmental dialogue, policy coordination and

the integration of regional resource markets. However, the practical achievements of these

regional efforts have been limited, as none have advanced beyond dialogue activities to more

formalised types of resource security cooperation. This article examines the dynamics of these

abortive attempts to regionalise resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, arguing that economic

nationalist resource policy preferences held by governments have acted as a major obstacle to

cooperation. Through an analysis of national resource policy regimes and the outputs of recent

cooperative efforts, it demonstrates how economic nationalism has encouraged inward-looking

and sovereignty-conscious actions on the part of major resource players in the Asia-Pacific. As

a result, intergovernmental resource cooperation has been limited to informal and voluntary ‘soft

law’ initiatives, which have not made a substantive contribution to the resource security of

economies in the region.

Keywords: resource security, Asia-Pacific region, economic nationalism, APEC, ASEAN, East Asia

Summit.

Email: j.wilson@murdoch.edu.au

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INTRODUCTION

Resource security has recently emerged as a major policy concern in the Asia-Pacific. Soaring world

prices for minerals and energy are threatening the economic security of many countries in the region,

whose governments are now seeking solutions to secure supplies of natural resources. Given deep

patterns of interdependence between resource-poor consumers in Asia and resource-rich producers on

the Pacific Rim, one of the strategies has been attempts to regionalise resource cooperation. During

the last decade, all four intergovernmental bodies in the Asia-Pacific – ASEAN, ASEAN+3, APEC

and the East Asia Summit – have launched resource cooperation initiatives. These have aimed to

improve the resource security of member states through information sharing, the coordination of

resource policies and the further integration of regional resource markets. However, the outcome of

these initiatives has been mixed. While these efforts have succeeded in building mechanisms for

intergovernmental dialogue, more substantive initiatives have either failed, or have been watered down

in ways that significantly constrain their effectiveness. Resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific

therefore remains poorly developed, and is yet to deliver substantive outcomes of consequence for

regional resource security.

Why, given the region’s increasing resource security problems, have efforts to institutionalise

cooperation been limited to low-impact dialogue activities? This article argues that the answer lies in

the domestic resource policy preferences of governments. Many regional governments maintain

‘resource nationalist’ policy regimes that prioritise state control rather than market mechanisms, which

are designed to support the economic interests of particular domestic groups. These nationalistic

policies mean governments take an inward-looking approach to resource security, oppose liberalisation

efforts and are highly sovereignty conscious when participating in regional initiatives. These policies

do not prevent resource cooperation entirely, but mean that efforts are instead channelled towards low-

cost dialogue activities – commonly referred to as ‘soft law’ – while more substantive endeavours have

failed to gain traction. The roots of weak resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific therefore lie in the

nationalistic policy preferences of regional governments.

RESOURCE SECURITY IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC

Resource security – the availability of natural resources at affordable prices – is one of the major

economic challenges facing countries in Asia today. The region is not only one of the most resource-

poor regions in the world, it is also one of the most resource-hungry – being home to both the developed

and energy-intensive economies of Japan, Korea and Singapore, as well as rapidly industrialising and

urbanising countries in Southeast Asia and China. Due to the paucity of local reserves, Asian countries

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are forced to import massive volumes of natural resources from producers abroad – in 2012, the

ASEAN+3 group imported $390 billion of minerals and $1112 billion of energy products. Together,

these resource commodities presently account for 34% of their merchandise imports, considerably

higher than the global average of 23% (UNCTAD 2013). In comparative terms, this import dependence

makes Asia one of the least resource secure regions in the world.

Asia’s resource security challenges have intensified considerably in recent years due to the so-

called ‘global resources boom’. Driven by high-speed growth in a range of developing economies,

world demand for minerals and energy is growing strongly, with primary energy consumption

increasing 58% during the 2000s (Enerdata 2012) But owing to the economics of mining and energy

industries, where investment has long lead times in the order of five to 10 years, global supply has

failed to keep pace with demand. International resource prices began a period of unprecedentedly rapid

growth in 2005, and by late 2012 most had increased four-fold on their levels only a decade earlier

(Figure 1). By threatening the ability to import resources at affordable prices, the boom has posed a

resource security crisis for Asian countries. The resource import bill of the ASEAN+3 economies

increased seven-fold to $1502 billion between 2002 and 2012 (UNCTAD 2013), placing a heavy drain

on national trade balances and significantly reducing the affordability of minerals and energy for both

industrial consumers and households.

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Figure 1 World resource price indices, 2000-2012

Source: (IMF 2013; UNCTAD 2013)

Nonetheless, resource consumers in Asia are somewhat fortunately positioned, as the broader

‘Asia-Pacific’ (defined as the eighteen members of the East Asia Summit) is home to a range of

resource-rich economies. On the Pacific Rim, Australia, Russia and the United States have large,

diversified and export-oriented mining and energy industries; while in Southeast Asia Indonesia,

Malaysia and Myanmar all possess sizeable reserves of natural gas. Economic complementarity

between these producer and consumer groups has produced deep patterns of interdependence within

the region. There is a vigorous seaborne trade in energy and minerals from exporting countries on the

Pacific Rim to consumption centres in Asia. Flowing in the opposite direction, foreign investment

from Northeast Asian industrial conglomerates helps to finance and develop resource industries across

the Pacific region. These trade and investment ties are mutually beneficial for all parties, providing

producers with export opportunities while helping to solve the resource security dilemmas of import-

dependent consumers. As a result, resource interdependence is very deep – presently, around half of

Asia-Pacific countries’ minerals and energy trade is with regional partners (FMC 2013, 68–69).

Regionalisation – the extent to which economic integration develops between countries within a

geographical space – is highly pronounced for resources in the Asia-Pacific.

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In situations of regional interdependence, the benefits of regionalisation can be augmented by

regionalism – the process of institutionalising formal economic governance arrangements between

governments. While regional cooperation cannot directly reduce record-high resource prices – which

are a function of supply and demand in world markets – it can help develop collective responses to

conditions of resource insecurity through a variety of mechanisms. At a minimum, regional

cooperation could facilitate information sharing between governments (Lesage et al. 2010) and

establish principles for national resource policies to promote policy coordination (Dubash and Florini

2011). It may also facilitate collective responses to resource insecurity by promoting strategies for

energy efficiency, emergency responses to supply disruptions and infrastructure for regional trade

(Victor and Yueh 2010). Most ambitiously, it could help integrate regional markets by promoting

liberalisation, harmonising rules and developing common directions for the reform of national policy

regimes (Goldthau and Witte 2009). Given the depth of resource interdependence, intergovernmental

cooperation could therefore make a significant contribution to the resource security of the Asia-Pacific.

Indeed, regional governments have begun to recognise the potential of resource cooperation,

and in recent years have launched several initiatives to improve their collective resource security. To

be sure, regional resource cooperation has a long history in Asia: the Agreement on ASEAN Energy

Cooperation was signed in 1986 (ASEAN 1986), and energy was one of the sectors targeted in APEC’s

first work program of 1989 (APEC 1989). However, these efforts have gained pace as resource security

has moved up national policy agendas during the last decade. ASEAN has developed a series of ‘action

plans’ for both energy and minerals cooperation, and in 2002 launched the Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline

project to establish an integrated Southeast Asian gas market. The ASEAN+3 grouping launched a

series of energy ministerial meetings in 2004, and in 2008 announced an Oil Stockpiling Road Map

aimed to improve the region’s capacity to respond to oil supply crises. The APEC Leaders’ Summits

have also issued a raft of statements in which governments have committed to a range of resource

security initiatives. Even the recently formed East Asia Summit has included resource security within

its agenda, issuing the Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security at only its second summit in

2007. All of these initiatives are motivated by the goal of collectively responding to resource

insecurity, and seek to put in place cooperative arrangements for information sharing, market

integration and the development of joint projects.

But despite a strong declarative commitment to regionalising resource governance, the outcomes

have been disappointing. All four bodies have poorly developed institutional arrangements for resource

cooperation, and many of their joint projects have foundered or failed outright due to weak

commitment from participating governments. Cooperation has instead emphasised informality,

dialogue processes over rule making, and voluntary rather than coordinated policy reform –

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symptomatic of what can be labelled a ‘soft law’ approach to regionalism (Abbott and Snidal 2000).

As a consequence of this preference for soft law, these regional initiatives have attracted near-universal

criticism for failing to live up to their declared goals. Andrews-Speed (2012, 15) has argued ASEAN

energy cooperation is “strong on vision and plans, but weak on delivery”; Nicolas (2009, 34) complains

of “unfulfilled promises” from regional organisations; while Ravenhill (2013, 58) concludes that these

bodies do little more than “collect and disseminate information and set aspirational targets [for resource

cooperation], the realization of which depends on the goodwill of the countries concerned”.

The gap between the rhetoric and reality of resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific requires

explanation. Why, given repeatedly declared intentions, have regional bodies failed to deliver on their

promise of institutionalising collective responses to resource insecurity? While weak resource

cooperation in the Asia-Pacific has been widely identified, few contributions to the scholarly literature

have systematically explored the reasons behind it. When this question is considered, it is typically

explained by the fact that regional organisations broadly adopt soft law approaches across most policy

areas (Ravenhill 2013, 59), or are attributed to the so-called ‘ASEAN Way’ norms of informality and

a strict protection of state sovereignty (Andrews-Speed 2012; Tan 2010). However, these explanations

are arguably incomplete, as they fail to probe the specific features of resource security in the Asia-

Pacific that complicate the cooperation process. While resource security certainly resembles the

cooperative outcomes observed in other issue areas, it is also the case that in some policy domains,

Asia-Pacific governments have proven capable of meaningful policy cooperation (Breslin and Wilson,

this issue). If weak intergovernmental cooperation is not a universal in the region, but only occurs in

certain areas, the question then becomes why effective resource cooperation has proven so challenging

despite considerable governmental efforts. Thus, it is necessary to explain what factors – specific to

resource security – have resulted in the issue being placed in the region’s ‘too-hard-basket’.

This article argues that patterns of resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific have been decisively

conditioned by the resource policy preferences of regional governments. Only a few governments in

the Asia-Pacific have open trade and investment policies, with many maintaining resource nationalist

policy regimes. Under these policies, governments intervene in the operation of resource markets to

advance politically defined goals which would not obtain if resource production was left to market

processes (Wilson 2011). Resource nationalism is typically associated with the protection of particular

economic interests, including resource-consuming industrial sectors, important popular constituencies

and political elites connected to resource industries (Bremmer and Johnston 2009; Nem Singh 2012).

Instead of treating resources as ‘just another commodity’ to be traded on open international markets,

resource nationalist policies eschew market mechanisms and subject resource industries to high levels

of state control.

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This governmental preference for nationalistic policies does not prohibit regional resource

cooperation entirely, but imposes constraints that limit it to low-cost dialogue activities. First, it leads

states to adopt an inward-looking and individualistic approach to resource security. Rather than

viewing it as a collective problem to be solved through joint action, it encourages states to undertake

‘go-it-alone’ policies emphasising national rather than regional solutions (Dent 2013). Second, it

largely rules out any form of cooperation based on liberalisation and market integration, which are

entirely incompatible with domestic resource policies prioritising state control (Christoffersen 2009).

Third, it significantly raises the sovereignty costs of formal and rules-based types of resource

cooperation. Governments with nationalistic policy preferences are likely to be highly sovereignty

conscious and will exercise vetoes against initiatives which constrain their policy autonomy. Formal

resource policy coordination becomes largely impossible, and the imperatives toward cooperation are

instead channelled towards lower-cost (and less effective) soft law initiatives such as information

sharing, dialogue activities and voluntary policy reforms. In short, the prevalence of resource

nationalism explains why resource cooperation initiatives in the Asia-Pacific have failed to advance

beyond soft law mechanisms.

To develop and substantiate this argument, the remainder of this article is organised as follows:

The next section surveys recent attempts to regionalise resource governance in the Asia-Pacific,

documenting the efforts – and poor track records – of ASEAN, the ASEAN+3, APEC and the East

Asia Summit. It then analyses the resource policy preferences of regional governments, identifying

patterns of resource nationalism among its main producing economies. The final section then develops

the connection between these policy preferences and stalled efforts at regional cooperation, outlining

how collective efforts to liberalise resource markets, eliminate fuel subsidies, establish oil sharing

arrangements and integrate gas networks have all foundered due to the prevalence of resource

nationalism.

COOPERATING FOR RESOURCE SECURITY IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC

Governments in the Asia-Pacific have shown a clear interest in pursuing collective strategies to

augment regional resource security. During the recent global boom, all four intergovernmental

organisations in the region have either launched new resource security initiatives (ASEAN+3 and East

Asia Summit) or have intensified past cooperative efforts (ASEAN and APEC). These bodies have

been highly successful in institutionalising dialogue, sharing information and negotiating principles

for national resource policies. However, more formal types of cooperation – which promote collective

responses to resource security or seek to integrate regional markets – have yet to emerge. As a result,

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the outcome of these initiatives has largely been limited to dialogue activities and voluntary policy

reforms.

APEC has a long history of promoting collective responses to resource insecurity. Energy

policy cooperation has been a major focus of the organisation since its creation, with energy selected

as one of the five sectoral dialogues in the first APEC work program of 1989 (APEC 1989). In 1996,

energy cooperation was put on a more institutionalised footing through two institutional developments

– the establishment of annual Energy Ministers’ Meetings, and the enumeration of fourteen

‘nonbinding energy policy principles’ (APEC 1996). These were followed in 2001 by the launch of its

Energy Security Initiative, a program which combined a number of short-term dialogue measures to

promote oil market stability with longer-term policy harmonisation and liberalisation goals (APEC

2001). APEC’s resources remit was subsequently expanded to include non-energy minerals in 2004

with the launching of Mining Ministers’ Meetings (APEC 2004), and the setting of ‘nonbinding mining

policy principles’ in 2007 that prioritised trade and investment liberalisation (APEC 2007).

As resource security issues became more pressing with the global boom of the mid-2000s,

APEC redoubled its cooperative efforts. This was primarily achieved through a series of declarations

made at APEC Summits, in which members committed to a series of domestic policy reforms designed

to improve regional resource security. In 2007, the Sydney Declaration set a goal for a 25% reduction

in regional energy intensity by 2030, to be achieved by governments developing ‘individual action

plans’ for energy efficiency. The Darwin Declaration of 2007 affirmed the importance of ‘well-

functioning markets that are progressively characterised by free and open trade’ and encouraged

members to reduce barriers to trade and investment in energy industries. The Yokohama (2010) and

St Petersburg Declarations (2011) saw members make a voluntary commitment to phase out

‘inefficient’ fuel subsidies that distort price signals in regional energy markets; while the Honolulu

Declaration (2012) saw the energy intensity target increased to 45% by 2035 (APEC 2013). Within a

few short years, APEC had negotiated a seemingly impressive set of resource security initiatives.

However, their practical effectiveness has been limited by two features – vagueness and

voluntarism. First, the majority of APEC’s commitments are vague and ill-specified. Its major

‘principles agreements’ – the Energy Security Initiative and Mining Policy Principles – call for desired

collective outcomes (such as liberalisation and policy coordination), but do little to specify the steps

required to achieve these goals. Similarly, APEC’s agreements to phase out fuel subsidies were

weakened by the fact they allowed governments to self-define whether a subsidy is inefficient or not.

This enabled several governments to declare their energy subsidies were not inefficient, and therefore

allowable, under the agreements (GSI 2012, 20). Second, in the rare instances where commitments are

specific, compliance has been made voluntary. APEC’s 2007 and 2011 agreements to reduce energy

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intensity are only enforced through voluntary action plans; while commitments for trade and

investment liberalisation are largely aspirational, using language such as ‘encourage’ and ‘promote’

throughout. The limiting effects of vagueness and voluntarism are reflected in the policy outcomes

which APEC’s agreements have delivered. According to its most recent implementation report into

the Energy Security Initiative, the majority of (low cost) information sharing exercises have been

implemented, but (harder) policy harmonisation efforts are yet to move beyond the research and

dialogue stage (APEC 2009).

In ASEAN, resource security cooperation has an even longer history. Dialogue processes began

in 1980 with the convening of the first ASEAN Energy Ministers’ Meeting, which in 1986 negotiated

the Agreement on ASEAN Energy Cooperation which facilitated technical exchanges between

national energy bureaucracies (ASEAN 1986). Energy cooperation received a shot in the arm under

the Hanoi Plan of Action of 1997, which called for the energy sector to be one of the major drivers of

economic integration within the grouping. This goal was implemented through a series of three

‘ASEAN Plans of Action for Energy Cooperation’, issued in 1999, 2004 and 2010. ASEAN also

broadened its remit to include minerals cooperation in the mid-2000s, adding a Mining Ministers’

Meeting to the summit process, and issuing ‘ASEAN Minerals Cooperation Action Plans’ in 2005 and

2011 (ASEAN 2014). These two action plan processes now function as the primary vehicle for

resource cooperation in ASEAN, and define a set of work programs which are advanced inter-

sessionally through national energy and mining bureaucracies.

Under these action plan processes, ASEAN began a series of joint resource cooperation

projects during the 2000s. First was the Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline (TAGP), proposed in 1999 and

then launched through an implementing agreement signed in 2002 (ASEAN 2002). The TAGP

intended to establish an integrated ASEAN natural gas market by building seven cross-border pipelines

that would link the grids of the region’s exporters (Indonesia, Myanmar and Malaysia) to major

consumption centres in peninsular Southeast Asia. Energy Ministers also committed to increase the

share of renewables in regional electricity production, in 2004 setting a target for 10% renewables by

2010, before raising this to 15% by 2015 (ASEAN 2004, 2010a). Deepening regional interdependence

in mining was also promoted in the first Minerals Cooperation Action Plan, which called on member

states to adopt ‘conducive institutional and regulatory frameworks’ for trade and investment (ASEAN

2005, 4). The ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement (APSA) was also negotiated in 2009, which

encouraged the sharing of oil during emergency shortages (ASEAN 2009).

Unfortunately, the declarative strength of ASEAN resource cooperation has not been followed

by equally vigorous implementation efforts. After fourteen years, half of the required pipelines for the

TAGP remain to be built, and only its Myanmar-Thailand and Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore linkages

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are presently operational (ASEAN 2010b, 18). Despite promises to promote renewable energy, the

share of renewables in the ASEAN-6 actually fell during the 2000s – from 17.7% to 15.2% (IEA 2011,

81) – with Thailand the only country to increase its rate. No ASEAN members have liberalised mining

policies, and Indonesia – a major minerals and gas exporter – has recently tightened its restrictions on

mining trade and investment (Herbert Smith 2012). The APSA agreement is also of limited practical

utility, as its oil sharing provisions are entirely voluntary and few ASEAN members presently have

any oil stockpiles to share in a supply crisis situation. As Andrews-Speed (2012, 15) argues, declarative

ASEAN commitments to develop resource security efforts have not translated into meaningful

outcomes at the implementation stage.

Resource cooperation has also been built into the two more recent additions to the regional

architecture of the Asia-Pacific: the interrelated ASEAN+3 and East Asia Summit processes. The

ASEAN+3 grouping began in 2004 by including an energy ministerial in its summits, which acted to

bring the region’s three main energy consumers (China, Japan and Korea) into the existing ASEAN

dialogue processes. This resulted in the ASEAN+3 adopting a set of twelve common energy policy

principles in its Work Program of 2007, which included commitments for energy diversification,

efficiency measures, information sharing and a ‘more favourable market environment’ for foreign

investment (ASEAN+3 2007). The East Asia Summit, formed as an outgrowth of the ASEAN+3 in

2005, also placed energy security on its agenda from the outset. It instituted its own series of energy

ministerials at its second summit in 2007, at which members agreed to develop individual action plans

for energy efficiency (EAS 2007b).

Not to be outdone by the other regional forums, the two ‘ASEAN Plus’ bodies have also

developed joint resource security projects. The ASEAN+3 has focussed on the issue of emergency

responses to oil supply crises, announcing an Oil Stockpiling Road Map (OSRM) in 2008 (ASEAN+3

2008). Intended to strengthen the region’s oil stockpiling capacities, the OSRM encouraged

governments to set stockpile targets and share information on national program with regional partners.

The East Asia Summit issued the Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security in 2007, arguably

the broadest and most encompassing resource security initiative in the region today. The Cebu

Declaration laid out five principles for collective energy security (efficiency, renewables, open

markets, greenhouse gas mitigation and private sector investment), and identified twelve specific

policy measures that member states would enact to advance these goals (EAS 2007a). The addition of

these further initiatives from the ASEAN Pluses have led to a complex and overlapping institutional

landscape for regional resource cooperation – beginning with ASEAN, then moving upwards through

the progressively larger ASEAN+3, East Asia Summit and APEC dialogue processes.

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However, with memberships that substantially overlap the other regional groupings, it should

come as little surprise that the ASEAN+3 and East Asia Summit have mirrored the outcomes seen

elsewhere. The ASEAN+3’s OSRM is yet to advance beyond purely aspirational statements. The

agreement was explicitly designed as a voluntary and non-binding cooperation process, and a draft

OSRM report endorsed at the 2010 summit went no further than encouraging – but not requiring –

members to share information on oil stockpiles (let alone share the stockpiles themselves!) (ASEAN+3

2010). The East Asia Summit’s Cebu Declaration suffers a similar problem, by focusing on low-cost

(but low-value) outcomes. Comparatively ‘easy’ issues such as energy efficiency and renewables were

included in the agreement, but the more challenging issues of trade and investment liberalisation were

absent. Moreover, even these low-cost issues were to be achieved through ‘individual action plans’,

which the text of the declaration indicated would be voluntary and wholly at the discretion of individual

governments. As a consequence, ASEAN+3 and the East Asia Summit have made only a minor

practical contribution to resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. Their primary function is acting as

a meso-layer for regional dialogue – between the smaller ASEAN and larger APEC groupings – in

which they have largely reproduced the pattern of soft law cooperation seen in these other bodies.

The overall landscape of resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific is summarised in Table 1,

which reveals there is a large gap between the quantity and quality of cooperative initiatives.

Considerable effort has been expended in promoting resource cooperation, and there are now six

ministerial dialogue processes and a further 19 agreements, declarations or action plans which in some

way promote collective responses to resource insecurity. The declared goals have been highly

ambitious: to foster policy dialogue, enumerate cooperative principles, develop collective responses to

specific issues and integrate regional resource markets through policy liberalisation.

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Table 1 Resource security cooperation initiatives in the Asia-Pacific

Initiative Declared Objectives Delivered Outcomes

Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation

Energy Ministerials (1996-) Policy principles (incl liberalisation) Principles only

Energy Security Initiative (2001) Integration/liberalisation

Energy efficiency

Renewable energy

Principles only

Voluntary

Voluntary

Mining Ministerials (2004-) Integration/liberalisation Principles only

Sydney Declaration (2007) Energy efficiency Voluntary

Mining Policy Principles (2007) Policy principles (incl liberalisation) Principles only

Darwin Declaration (2007) Integration/liberalisation

Energy efficiency measures

Principles only

Voluntary

Yokohama Declaration (2010) Energy subsidy reduction Voluntary

Fukui Declaration (2010) Information sharing/research Dialogue only

Honolulu Declaration (2011) Energy efficiency

Energy subsidy reduction

Voluntary, low impact

St Petersburg Declaration (2012) Energy subsidy reduction Voluntary, low impact

Association of Southeast Asian Nations

Energy Ministerials (1980-) Policy principles (incl liberalisation) Principles only

Energy Cooperation Action Plans (1999,

2004, 2010)

Renewable energy

Energy efficiency

Voluntary, low impact

Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline (2002) Infrastructure Incomplete

Mining Ministerials (2005-) Policy principles (incl liberalisation) Dialogue only

Minerals Cooperation Action Plans (2005,

2011)

Information sharing/research Dialogue only

ASEAN Petroleum Sharing Agreement Oil sharing/stockpiles Voluntary, unused

ASEAN Plus Three

Energy Ministerials (2004-) Policy principles (incl liberalisation)

Energy subsidy reduction

Principles only

Voluntary, low impact

ASEAN+3 Work Plan (2007) Policy principles (incl liberalisation) Principles only

Oil Stockpiling Road Map (2008) Oil sharing/stockpiles Voluntary, unused

East Asia Summit

Energy Ministerials (2007-) Integration/liberalisation Principles only

Cebu Declaration (2007) Policy principles (incl liberalisation)

Energy efficiency measures

Principles only

Voluntary, low impact

Note: All initiatives also include provisions for information-sharing and research between national energy and/or mining

bureaucracies.

However, progress in implementing policies to achieve these goals – moving from soft to hard

law cooperation – is conspicuously absent. Some initiatives remain stalled at the stage of principle-

setting. Market integration and liberalisation provides an illustrative case: all four regional bodies have

given in-principle endorsement to these goals, but none have yet enumerated precisely what policies

this should entail, or have developed mechanisms to monitor compliance. Moreover, those few

initiatives which have gone beyond principle-setting – energy efficiency measures, fuel subsidy

reductions and emergency oil sharing – are entirely voluntary, and as a result have had few meaningful

impacts. To be sure, there has been considerable success in developing dialogue mechanisms and the

setting of principles. However, these soft law activities impose no enforceable commitment on

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governments, and are yet to produce concrete and impactful results. These patterns reveal that resource

cooperation is only thinly institutionalised – soft law processes are well-advanced but hard law

mechanisms are yet to emerge. While resource interdependence in the Asia-Pacific is characterised by

high levels of regionalisation, formal regionalism remains embryonic.

DOMESTIC POLICY PREFERENCES AND RESOURCE NATIONALISM

To explain these features of resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific we need to understand the policy

preferences of the involved governments. One of the salient features of governmental policies in the

region is ‘resource nationalism’ – the use of state rather than market-based resource policy

frameworks. Notwithstanding a broad global trend towards economic liberalisation, many

governments maintain tight control over their resource sectors, in order to protect the economic

interests of domestic groups with some stake in resource production. As a result of these policy

preferences, many of the region’s leading mineral and energy producers – including China, India,

Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia and Thailand – take an inward-looking approach to resource security that

prioritises the advancement of domestic interests over those of trade partners in the region.

Resource nationalism is a strategy where governments opt for a state-based approach to their

resource sectors. It is rationalised by the idea that laissez-faire policies will not see resources developed

in ways that offer maximum benefits for the host government, and that states should instead use

selective, interventionist policies to achieve greater national benefits from their resource industries

(Wilson 2011). Governmental preferences for resource nationalism originate from political dynamics

within states, particularly the need to protect and advance the interests of certain privileged domestic

interest groups (Bremmer and Johnston 2009; Nem Singh 2012). Through state intervention,

governments can manipulate the operation of resource markets in ways that favour domestic interest

groups, such as local resource corporations, firms in the industrial sector, energy-consuming

constituencies and political elites connected to the resource sector. While resource nationalist policies

are found in many of the region’s major resource suppliers, the specific form these interventions take

varies between states.

First, state ownership of resource companies is common in many Asia-Pacific countries.

Despite a trend towards privatisation in global resource sectors during the 1990s, many governments

continue to reserve mining and energy for state-owned enterprises (SOEs). State ownership is nearly

universal in the region’s oil and gas industries, in which SOEs are either monopoly or majority players

in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia and Thailand (Table 2). SOEs also dominate the coal

industries of China and India, which produced four billion tonnes of coal – just over half of global

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production – in 2011 (Enerdata 2012). They also have a significant presence in the aluminium, iron

ore and base metals sectors of India, Indonesia and China, three of the region’s most important minerals

producers (RMG 2011). Indeed, the only major producers in the Asia-Pacific who have wholly

privately-owned resource sectors are Australia and the United States. State ownership of resource

corporations is a tool used by certain political elites to advance their standing within domestic politics.

This is seen both in China, where oil firms are part of the nomenklatura system of the Chinese

Communist Party and management posts act as a springboard for national leadership (Taylor 2012),

as well as in Russia, where the recent renationalisation of the oil industry was driven by the campaign

against the so-called ‘oligarchs’ opposed to the Putin regime (Bradshaw 2009).

Table 2 Ownership patterns in major Asia-Pacific resource producers

Oil & Gas Coal Mining

Australia Private Private Private

China SOE monopoly SOE dominant SOE dominant

India SOE dominant SOE dominant Mixed

Indonesia SOE dominant Private Mixed

Malaysia SOE dominant Private

Russia SOE dominant Private Private

Thailand SOE dominant Private

United States Private Private Private

Source: (EIA 2013; USGS various years)

Many regional governments also include trade restrictions amongst their resource nationalist

policies. These comprise policies used to control and regulate the export of resources in order to

prioritise local economic interests. Several governments apply export taxes to energy and/or mineral

products – including China, Malaysia, Russia and India (WTO various years) – which effectively

function as a tax on foreign resource consumers. Others directly limit the quantity of resource

commodities that may be exported. China applies export quotas to many resource products, Indonesia

demands that a portion of minerals and energy be reserved for sale to local consumers, and the Russian

government controls all energy exports through state ownership of its pipeline infrastructure (WTO

various years). Indonesia has also applied processing requirements, in 2012 banning the export of

several raw minerals in order to force mining companies to process metals locally (PwC 2012). These

trade restrictions function as a form of protection for industrial enterprises, either by reducing local

raw material prices below world levels (export taxes), or directly mandating materials processing

(quotas and processing requirements). For example, recent increases in mineral export taxes applied

by both India and China have had the effect of advantaging downstream processing industries (such

as the steel sector) vis-à-vis their foreign competitors (OECD 2010). While these nationalistic trade

15

restrictions offer benefits for the protected industrial enterprises, they do so by reducing supply to –

and thereby exacerbating the resource insecurity of – trade partners.

A range of investment controls are also evident across the Asia-Pacific. Several governments

restrict foreign investment in resource industries that are deemed ‘strategic’ for national economic

development. Restrictions on foreign investment in resource sectors have recently been announced by

Russia (Morozova 2009) and Indonesia (PwC 2012), and China (State Council 2012). Like trade

restrictions, these foreign investment policies are designed as a form of protection for domestic

economic interests by ensuring the resource industries remain under local control. Russia’s ‘Strategic

Investments Law’ of 2008 required foreign investors to seek permission for investment in resource

industries, in order to ensure regulatory oversight of foreign ownership in a sector the government

wishes to preserve for local owners (Oxford Analytica 2008). China restricts foreign investment to a

very limited number of mining sectors, which it has explained is necessary to ensure ‘absolute state

control’ over these strategic industries (China Daily 2006). For its part, the Indonesian government

has officially explained its resource investment restrictions as a form of industrial rather than mining

policy, designed to support and nurture the development of local industrial firms (Reuters 2013).

Many governments also provide subsidies in order to reduce local energy prices. In the Asia-

Pacific, the main culprits are Russia, China, India and Indonesia, who all subsidise energy via domestic

price controls. However, a recent study by the Global Subsidies Initiative (2012) reveals that within

APEC only Singapore and Papua New Guinea do not subsidise energy in some way, and estimates the

value of regional subsidies at US$121 billion a year. Despite being economically inefficient (as they

encourage excess consumption and deter energy investment), these fuel subsidies are widespread due

to political logics in favour of their maintenance. As Victor (2009) notes, a wide array of economic

interest groups – including industrial firms, small businesses and households – benefit from fuel

subsidies, making them a populist policy that is easy for governments to enact but hard to reduce or

reform. As recent experience in both Indonesia and India has shown, governmental attempts to reduce

energy subsidies have either been watered down or abandoned in the face of popular opposition and

lobbying from effected business interests (Beaton and Lontoh 2010; Lang and Wooders 2012).

Importantly, the effect of these subsidies on resource security is to lower energy prices for domestic

constituencies, but in doing so they promote excess consumption and reduce the overall availability of

energy to consumers in other countries.

In sum, many of the major resource-producing governments in the Asia-Pacific have strong

preferences for nationalistic policy regimes. In order to protect the economic interests of political elites,

local industrial firms and popular constituencies, the governments of China, India, Indonesia,

Malaysia, Russia and Thailand exercise considerable state control over their resource sectors. Their

16

resource policy regimes are relatively illiberal, with governments consistently opting to either directly

control resource industries (through state ownership), or intervene in the operation of resource markets

through selective trade, industrial and subsidy policy measures. With the exception of the United States

and Australia, little commitment to market-based policies is evident amongst the region’s main

resource producers. Additionally, these governments’ approaches to resource security are highly

inward-looking, as nationalistic policies improve a country’s resource security only by controlling

investment and trade patterns in order to restrict supplies available to consumers abroad.

RESOURCE NATIONALISM AND THE LIMITS TO ASIA-PACIFIC RESOURCE

COOPERATION

In the Asia-Pacific, there is a demonstrable connection between nationalistic policy preferences at the

domestic level and patterns of resource cooperation efforts at the international. Resource nationalism

places major constraints on the degree to which governments are willing to engage in formal types of

resource cooperation – by promoting inward-looking approaches, undermining efforts for

liberalisation, and encouraging the addition of sovereignty-protective exceptions to cooperation

proposals. If we consider the various initiatives launched by organisations in the region, it is evident

that nationalistic policy preferences have consistently been the main blockage to initiatives that go

beyond soft law types of cooperation.

Efforts to liberalise and integrate regional resource markets provide the clearest example.

While in-principle support for liberalisation has been expressed by all four regional bodies, none have

been willing to move beyond ‘encouraging’ members to liberalise policy. Resource nationalist policies

are a key factor, as regional governments have clearly proven unwilling to agree to liberalising reforms

that are incompatible with policies designed to protect domestic economic interests. This unwillingness

to support liberalisation is particularly evident in the actions of major players in regional resource

markets. In terms of international cooperation, China’s 2012 Energy Policy (State Council 2012) only

promises to participate in dialogue and technical exchanges with partners, while Indonesia’s National

Energy Policy of 2006 makes no mention of international cooperation at all (Republic of Indonesia

2006). Russia has consistently opposed calls for market liberalisation in international forums (Lesage

et al. 2009, 266), while the liberally-minded United States has frequently voiced its frustrations at

resource nationalism and has therefore been reluctant to participate more deeply in regional

cooperative efforts (Christoffersen 2009). In a region populated by many resource nationalists,

liberalisation and market integration is clearly a non-starter.

17

ASEAN’s TAGP project illustrates how more joint projects have also failed due to nationalistic

policy regimes. Progress on the TAGP has been glacially slow: by ASEAN’s own admission, only half

of the bilateral connections required for a genuinely regional gas network have been built (ASEAN

2010b, 18); and even these were largely driven by commercial interests within the countries, rather

than the TAGP agreement itself (Carroll and Sovacool 2010). All four of the remaining connections

will run from the East Natuna gas field in Indonesia to markets in peninsular Southeast Asia, and their

future construction depends on whether East Natuna can supply sufficient gas to ensure commercial

viability. However, recent Indonesian moves toward resource nationalism make this unlikely. In 2008,

Indonesia confiscated the East Natuna concession from ExxonMobil and awarded it to the SOE

Pertamina (Oil and Gas Journal 2009), before indicating in 2011 that the majority of the gas will be

reserved for domestic consumption in order to shield local consumers from high energy prices (Jakarta

Post 2011). With no Indonesian gas likely to be on offer, there is little reason for the remaining TAGP

connections to be built, and the creation of an integrated Southeast Asian gas network remains elusive

for the foreseeable future.

Efforts to reduce energy subsidies have similarly foundered in the face of resource nationalism.

Both APEC and the ASEAN+3 have issued statements calling on members to reduce energy subsidies,

but the voluntary nature of these commitments means the response has been decidedly underwhelming.

According to data from the Global Subsidies Initiative (2012), only three APEC economies (Mexico,

Malaysia and Indonesia) have reduced consumer-level energy subsidies in recent years, while a further

three (Korea, Canada and the US) have removed tax deductions for some sections of the mining

industry. But overall levels of energy subsidisation in the region remain stubbornly high: particularly

in Russia (whose subsidies amounted to $46 billion in 2012), China ($27 billion), India ($43 billion)

and Indonesia ($26 billion) (IEA 2014). Given that energy subsidies are tied up with political

imperatives to shield domestic consumers from high energy prices, it should come as little surprise

these governments have exploited the voluntarist nature of these commitments to make no discernible

changes to their subsidisation schemes.

When it comes to regional oil sharing arrangements, Chinese resource nationalism has proven

a major sticking point. While both the ASEAN+3’s OSRM (2008) and ASEAN’s APSA (2009)

agreements are strictly voluntarist, some have suggested these may develop into a more binding

agreement – along the lines of an ‘Asian IEA’ – in years to come (Shin and Savage 2011, 2823).

However, China’s present stance on oil sharing makes such an outcome unlikely. China began building

a strategic petroleum reserve in the mid-2000,s and according to current plans will have the world’s

second largest reserve – holding 500 million barrels of oil – by 2020 (IEA 2012). Controversially, the

Chinese government refuses to disclose how much oil its strategic reserve presently holds, and has

18

implicitly rejected several invitations to share any information on the program with the IEA (Chan,

Lee and Chan 2012, 152–154). Its secretive stance on oil reserves has been described by an IEA official

as a ‘fundamental problem’ for oil sharing in the region (Platts 2013), and effectively rules China out

of any regional agreement. Given the fact that few other countries in the region have sizeable stockpiles

of their own, any oil sharing arrangement without China would be of limited practical utility during an

oil supply crisis.

Of all the initiatives, the promotion of energy efficiency is the only area in which national

policies have been developed that accord with the declared intent of regional organisations. APEC has

been particularly active in promoting energy efficiency, and all APEC members now have some form

of national plan in place that sets quantitative efficiency goals (APERC 2011). Nonetheless, whether

this outcome can be attributed to regional cooperation is questionable. At the time of APEC’s 2007

Sydney Declaration, only three of its members (Russia, Singapore and Brunei) did not already have

energy efficiency plans in place. This indicates these agreements only codified policies which

governments were already in the process of enacting, and cannot be considered a genuinely collective

response to resource security facilitated by APEC. Tellingly, energy efficiency measures are the only

initiative that does not threaten protected domestic economic interests groups or clash with

nationalistic policy regimes. In this regard, energy efficiency is the exception which proves the rule –

in the Asia-Pacific, resource cooperation is limited to dialogue and voluntary initiatives which do not

clash the with resource nationalist policy preferences of regional governments.

CONCLUSION

Governmental preferences for resource nationalist policies have prevented resource cooperation in the

Asia-Pacific moving beyond soft law forms. As resource insecurity has intensified during the last

decade, intergovernmental organisations have sought to build upon pre-existing patterns of regional

interdependence by launching resource security cooperation initiatives. However, the outcomes have

been mixed. There has been marked success in establishing soft law mechanisms, which have enabled

information sharing and set principles for resource policy cooperation. But there has been little in the

way of formal initiatives that substantively address resource security, due to the fact that many

governments in the region engage in resource nationalism to protect domestic interest groups. These

policy preferences raise the sovereignty costs of participating in formal regional arrangements, and

make governments only willing to commit to either low-cost dialogue activities or voluntary reforms.

As a consequence of this bias towards soft law mechanisms, resource security in the Asia-Pacific

remains poorly regionalised, and high levels of resource interdependence have not been matched by a

corresponding development in intergovernmental policy coordination.

19

An implication is that the future of resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific is likely to deliver

more of the same. While some have argued that soft law resource cooperation may potentially develop

into more formal arrangements over time (Christoffersen 2009, 208–10; Dent 2013, 966; Shin and

Savage 2011, 2823; Tan 2010, 21), the constraining role of nationalistic policy preferences identified

here seemingly rules out this possibility. Asia-Pacific governments favour informal types of

cooperation because their nationalistic policy regimes which are incompatible with more formal types

of cooperation. Moreover, these policy preferences are tied to the protection of domestic interest

groups, and no signs of a move towards more liberal approaches are presently evident. While

nationalistic approaches remain widespread, resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific will continue on

its present course of informality and voluntarism, and governance arrangements that substantively

address resource security problems will remain beyond the reach of regional organisations.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to thank Natasha Hamilton-Hart, Anita John, Lee Jones, two anonymous reviewers

and participants in the Rescaling of Economic Governance in Asia workshop, Murdoch University,

October 2013.

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