Emerging energy trends in East Asia :|the relationship between production levels and world oil prices

Abstract

This thesis looks at the emerging energy trends in East Asia between the nations of Japan, China, and South Korea and the importance they have in the global energy market. Even though the world supply-demand situation of oil has been simplified due to the alternative energy sources in the past several decades, still oil is the most needed input for production. Industrialized countries such as Japan, China, and South Korea are known to be huge consumers of the oil and petroleum products for meeting high demand. In microeconomics, supply and demand relationship is one of the economic models of price determination; the price of a product can differ in time significantly according to the market. Therefore, the question is whether the demand of East Asia for petroleum has any impact on this price determination. I have observed that some reports and economists claim that the increasing demand for oil from East Asia is the key factor for oil prices to fluctuate for the last couple of years.