The Foreign Service Journal, December 2003

Sakhalin I through North Korea to the South as part of its rapproche- ment with Pyongyang. Conceivably, the pipeline route could be extended across the Tsushima strait to south- ern Japan. But Japan is not likely to need Sakhalin gas routed through Korea because ExxonMobil and SODECO are already planning a direct 870-mile pipeline link from Sakhalin I to northern Japan that could provide 8.2 billion cubic meters of gas annually to Japanese consumers. Ultimately, in order to make gas pipeline networks in Northeast Asia a reality, the governments of China, Russia, South Korea and Japan would all have to provide large-scale financial support and launch a serious regional political dialogue on pipeline development designed to set common objectives and priorities. Such a dialogue should be institutionalized in a Northeast Asia Energy Forum that would lead, in turn, to a Northeast Asia Energy Charter Treaty patterned after the one nego- tiated a decade ago by the European Union. “A comprehensive regional approach accepted by all of us would be much better than letting the vagaries of the marketplace decide what happens,” observes Zhou Dadi, Director General of the Energy Research Institute in China’s State Planning Commission. “Is some of the Kovykta gas going to the two Koreas and Japan? How much Sakhalin gas will come to Northeast China? How much to Korea? How much to Japan? If everything is left to each company, each country, each interest group, China will have to think of itself and give priority to its own immediate pressures and demands. It would be much better for everybody if we adopt a region- al approach.” ■ F O C U S D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 53 A comprehensive settlement must address not only Pyongyang’s military security but also its economic security.