MANILA: Southeast Asian leaders are expected to discuss new measures to deal with the energy crunch triggered by the fallout of the US-Israel war on Iran during their upcoming annual summit, the Philippines said on Friday.
As chair of the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Philippines will host the three-day gathering in Manila from Sunday, which will also be joined by other world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The global energy crisis is among the issues expected to top the agenda, as Southeast Asian countries lacking stockpiles faced energy uncertainty this year after US-Israeli attacks on Iran and Tehran’s retaliatory strikes on American allies in the Gulf region upended key supply chains moving through the Strait of Hormuz.
“We are still feeling the impacts of the Middle East crisis,” Dominic Xavier Imperial, a spokesperson for the Philippines’s ASEAN chairmanship, said on Friday.
“So, we should expect some additional measures and decisions from our leaders in addressing the energy situation that we’re facing at the moment.”
ASEAN, one of the world’s fastest economic blocs, imports more than 55 percent of the crude for its refineries from the Middle East.
