Eric Watkins
Senior Correspondent
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 18 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said a much greater percentage of his country's oil exports will be heading to Asia and the Pacific in the next decade as part of a strategy of diversified marketing aimed at creating energy security for producing countries.
"We hope and we plan to increase our energy supplies to Asia and the Pacific from the current 3% of the country's oil exports to at least 30% of the overall energy exports in 10 years' time," Putin told the Group of Eight countries' parliamentary speakers in Sochi, Russia, Sept 17.
"We are to accomplish two major transport projects to deliver natural gas to China in this direction," Putin said. He added, "Russia has been consistently diversifying energy export routes and consequently has been working to make energy exports more reliable."
He said the strategy had initially met with resistance, but that everyone now agrees that energy security means "not only security for consumers, but also security for producers. Only if we take due account of each others' interests will we be able to attain a positive effect," he said.
Putin said construction of the North European Gas Pipeline, agreed to in early September, also forms part of his country's strategy of energy security.
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