Topic: Offshore Drilling
Country: India
Delegate Name: Gregory Ewing
School: Royal Oak High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All India position papers GLIMUN 2008 committees
In the past few years the entire globe has seen the price of petroleum increase, and the Republic of India is no exception. This increase is spurred mainly by an increase in demand, particularly in the modernizing economies of India and China, as well as other developing nations. We see the expansion of the Indian economy as a great benefit to the people of India, and also see this expansion as being strongly coupled to Indians’ increased use of energy, particularly petroleum. This increase in demand has spurred exploration into areas offshore to find rich deep-water wells.
There is a strong coupling, observed across many modern economies, between Gross Domestic Production and energy usage. As India grows, we can only expect its energy usage, particularly its use of petroleum, to grow. India had made great strides in decoupling the link between energy use and GDP, but it cannot be expected that energy use will decrease while GDP increases. We see an increase in energy prices, and particularly petroleum as potentially limiting India’s development and emergence into a modern economy. Given this, we have few options but to attempt to expand the supply of petroleum.
In particular, we are expanding our licensing of deep water drilling at promising sites off our coastline, in waters under our control. The Republic of India has issued licenses for the drilling of 218 wells off our coast, and will continue to issue licenses as the need arises and promising areas of exploration are identified. Furthermore, the Republic of India will encourage the construction of drilling rigs, since in 2007 the rig utilization rate in South Asia was 97.6%, and this might restrict our ability to proceed forthwith.
We understand that global climate change means that fossil fuel usage cannot be increased without limit. Therefore, to ameliorate our consumption rates, we have passed the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) in India. Among the policies enacted, it states that India’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions “will at no point exceed that of developed countries even as we pursue our development objectives.” Because the Republic of India does understand that offshore drilling cannot and will not be a permanent alternative to renewable energy, we have National Solar, Wind, and Hydroelectric Missions, that work in tandem with the NAPCC. Therefore the Republic of India, within the precedence of the NAPCC, is advocating a global plan on enhancing energy efficiency.
