RSIS Seminar by Dr Frank Umbach, Visiting Senior Fellow, RSIS; Research Director, European Centre for Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS), King’s College, London; and Senior Associate, Centre for European Security Strategies (CESS GmbH), Munich
The South China Sea Conflicts and its Energy Dimensions
Lecture Abstract
Due to the uncertainties of U.S. President Trump’s future China and China Sea policies as well as the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague in July 2016 by rejecting China’s “historical” maritime claims in the South China Sea, the territorial and resource disputes in the South China Sea have moved into new and even more insecure uncharted waters. On the other side, in light of previous “peak-oil”-assumptions and the expected worldwide increase of resource competition, the presumed large offshore oil and gas fields in the South China Sea may no longer be so important in times of global oil and gas oversupplies on the world energy markets. The seminar and my presentation will focus on the energy (hydrocarbon) dimensions of the regional territorial disputes in the light of new worldwide oil and gas megatrends and their geopolitical implications for Asia and beyond.
About the Speaker
Dr phil. Frank Umbach is the Research Director of the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS), King‘s College, London; a Senior Associate at the Centre for European Security Strategies (CESS GmbH), Munich & Consultant for the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) and Wikistrat.com. He had also been a (Non-Resident) Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States (ACUS) in Washington D.C. between 2010 and 2015. He’s an internationally recognized expert on global energy security, geopolitics, critical (energy) infrastructure protection/CEIP, and (maritime) security policies in Asia-Pacific as well as Russia/Central Asia.
Dr Umbach is presently also a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Natolin/Warsaw (Poland), teaching on ““EU external energy governance”. Since 2014, he is also a member and the independent “Subject Matter Expert (SME)” on international energy security of NATO’s annual “Strategic Forecasting Analysis (SFA)”. From 2003-2007, he was a Co-Chair of the European Committee of the Council for Security Co-operation in Asia-Pacific (CSCAP-Europe). From 1996-2007, he was the head of the programmes “Security Policies in Asia-Pacific” and “international energy security” at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)in Bonn and Berlin; a research fellow at the Federal Institute for East European and International Studies (BIOst) from 1991-1994 and a visiting research fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA) in Tokyo from 1995 to 1996.
Dr Umbach’s consultancy work and testimonies includes the German Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence Policies; European Commission and European Parliament, US-State and Energy Departments, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (US-Congress), the Lithuanian Government, the House of Lords (British Parliament), the Polish Foreign and Economic Ministries, Hungarian Foreign Ministry, South Korean Foreign Ministry, NATO, OSCE, World Energy Council (WEC), Federation of the German Industries (BDI), companies and advising international investors/investor groups.
He is also the author of more than 500 publications in more than 30 countries worldwide, including being a contract author of the Geopolitical Intelligence Service (GIS) in Liechtenstein since 2011.
