Increasing competition for oil does not automatically lead to "oil wars" – as Matthias Basedau from Hamburg’s GIGA Institute claims. In his article, "Erdölkriege – Kriege der Zukunft?" (Wars over Oil – Wars of the Future?), he argues that international resource management failures have to merge with heavy dependency on oil before they develop the potential for conflict escalation. Larger oil importing countries, however, possess quite a few options to overcome (short-term) shortages, such as switching to alternative energy sources. Additionally, history has shown that the emergence of so-called international "oil wars" can not be traced back to the single factor oil, but rather to a whole conglomeration of influencing factors, which all come into play. Direct aggressive confrontation between the large oil importers, namely China and the US, is therefore unlikely to evolve.
Intra-state violence, in contrast, is more likely to increase. At present, armed conflicts between rebel groups and governments of oil exporting countries are the most common form of oil-related violent conflict. The expansion of oil exploitation might well contribute to a diffusion and expansion of such conflicts. The paper also highlights that several other multipliers play a key role in the emergence of inner state oil conflicts, such as bad or weak governance and a low overall level of development. As an increase in oil prices may also result in growing competition between importing countries, the diversification of economies and energy sources in both oil importing and exporting countries can contribute significantly to reducing such conflict potential. Besides, a stronger international legal framework and multilateral cooperation is required, not only to increase transparency in the oil business, but particularly to keep the likelihood of international wars over oil at the current low level. (Achim Maas)

The article is available in German at http://www.giga-hamburg.de/dlcounter/download.php?d=/content/publikationen/pdf/gf_global_0706.pdf 

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, October 2007