Home to one third of the world's population, China and India are essential factors in the interplay of forces that has driven global oil prices to their current highs.
The two Asian giants seem on a path of rapid economic growth that could last for decades, making it all but inevitable that their already sizeable impact on international energy markets will grow even bigger in years to come.
"Most of the challenges that this planet faces are concentrated in this great nation China," Bruno Weymuller, the executive vice president of Total, the world's fourth-largest oil company, said recently.
It all comes down to huge population numbers. The average Chinese consumes about one tenth the energy of his American counterpart, but with 1.3 billion people, that adds up to a major factor in global demand.
China consumes 6.5 million barrels of oil every day, or eight percent of world consumption.
It is forced to import more than 40 percent, and as a result it has been moving global demand together with the United States for the past few years.
Similarly, India currently consumes 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, having to import close to 70 percent. While the current figures cause concern in energy planning departments in most of the world's capitals, it is the projections for the future that are triggering genuine alarm.
China still relies on coal for about two thirds of its energy demand, but that is unlikely to last.
By 2030, the Chinese could wind up consuming 15 million barrels of oil a day, or the equivalent of the current US imports, according to a projection by the European Commission in 2003.
China already seems to be headed in that direction, having accounted for 40 percent of the global increase in oil demand over the past four years. Facing this scenario, China has embarked on a 15-year program to bring about more diversified and less wasteful energy production, combined with a greater emphasis on nuclear and renewable energy.
"If we don't, we run the risk of surpassing the United States (in oil consumption)," Zheng Xinli, a researcher with the Communist Party's Central Committee, warned earlier this month.
Indians tend to downplay the impact their country has on global demand, pointing out that the 2.5 million barrels of oil it consumes every day must be seen against global consumption of 84 million barrels.
"That's less than three percent," said Sarthak Behuria, president of Indian Oil Corporation.
Some experts tend to agree, warning against exaggerating the role of the Asian economies in the current explosion of energy prices.
"They are not currently the decisive factor," said Alain Sepulchre, a researcher at the Hong Kong-based French Center for Research on Contemporary China.
"It's got much more to do with the risk of war in the Middle East, and the problems in Venezuela and Nigeria," he said.
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