India has joined China in a growing demand for oil that now has the world's two most populous nations bidding up energy prices and racing against each other and global energy companies in agrab at oil and natural gas fields around the world. Energy economists in the West admire the success of both China and India in kindling their industrialization furnaces. But they also cannot help worrying about what the effect will be on energy supplies as the 37 percent of the world's population that lives in these two countries rushes to catch up with Europe, the United States and Japan. And environmentalists worry about the effects on global warming from the two nations' plans to burn more fossil fuels. With engineering expertise and equipment more available around the world, one result is that oil executives and drillers in remote spots increasingly speak Mandarin or Hindi, not English. Their newfound commercial connections live in pariah states such as Sudan and Myanmar, one sign that the political dynamics of the world oil market pose a difficult challenge for the Bush administration. The prospect of China's consuming ever-growing lakes of oil has been noted over the years, although it is gaining new urgency as Chinese consumption continues to soar. China's oil imports climbed by a third last year as its oil demand exceeded Japan's for the first time. Now India is joining China in a stepped-up contest for energy, with both economies booming recently just as their oil production at home has sagged. China trails only the United States in energy consumption; India has moved into fourth place, behind Russia. India and China are also expanding their navies as they become increasingly dependent on lines of oil tankers from the Mideast, posing the beginnings of an eventual challenge to U.S. influence in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. [more]