The fight for hegemony in Central Asia has existed for ages. Strategically placed between two nuclear powers—Russia and China—and geopolitically located at the heart of Eurasia, Central Asia has always remained in global limelight. Even after the disintegration of the USSR, the geopolitical importance of Central Asia never waned down, instead emerged as a grand chessboard for regional and extra-regional player for the immense opportunities it has offered in the form of widely untapped natural resources and geostrategic leverages. Importantly, it has emerged as the latest geological landscape for the energy crunch countries as potentially new and non-OPEC source of oil and natural gas. In the quest for energy security and diversity of supply sources by the energy consumers, the heartland region has witnessed a new great game in the scramble for resources. This accentuated struggle for oil and energy in the region has further led to aggressive foreign policy formulations and strategic calculation by countries like the United States, China, European Union, Japan, Israel, Iran, Pakistan and India, to which many now call as the New Great Game for not just controlling but administering the energy resources of the region. The bottom line of the New Great Game unlike the previous version is essentially played out around petropolitics and pipeline diplomacy. It is in this context this research article makes a modest attempt to examine the energy factor in the geopolitics of Central Asia and tries to figure out the position of India in the epic quest for oil in the traditional bastion of Russia and the new grand chessboard of China and the United States.

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Energy has become the symbol of 21st-century geopolitics. Asia in this geopolitical game is considered to be the ground zero. As of 2021, at least a quarter of the world’s liquid hydrocarbons are consumed by China, India, Japan and South Korea. Over the next 20 years, 85% of the growth in energy consumption will come from the Indo-Pacific region. According to the World Energy Outlook, China will account for 40% of the growing consumption until 2025, after which India will emerge as the biggest single source of increasing demand. The increase in demand for gas will overtake that for oil and coal combined. Part of the story here is that the Indo-Pacific region will become increasingly reliant on oil from the Middle East and Central Asia. By 2030, 80% of Chinese oil will be imported while 90% in the case of India. But Japan and South Korea will remain 100% dependent on oil imports. Where from these huge amounts of oil and gas will come? The scramble for oil and gas in Central Asia probably is the right answer to the question asked. To materialize the quest for oil and energy, many countries although lately but turned towards Central Asia for sure. With this premise, the present article attempts to contextualize the geopolitics of energy in Central Asia and tries to investigate the nature and contour of the great game while illustrating the unflinching importance of the region for global energy security in general and the Indian energy security in particular.

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