Expensive Oil a Burden on Asia: S'pore

"For those of us who are not oil exporters and we import all our oil, this is a burden which is growing," Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said. "It is particularly a burden on the low-income groups and it's also a factor in increasing the inflation rate and the cost of living for consumers in their countries."

Lee quoted the leader of India, which subsidizes fuel, as telling other Asian heads of state during their meeting that the cost of energy is of a greater concern to him than the effects of climate change.

The expensive resource is also making it costlier for many countries in the region to subsidize fuel for its citizens even if they are earning more from oil exports, Lee said during a press briefing after a meeting of East Asian leaders in Singapore.

"For the net exporters, it means more revenue, but ... many of them have held domestic prices low and subsidized their domestic oil consumption," he said. "As world oil prices rise, that increasingly becomes a problem and a burden on their finances."

Record high oil prices have yet to dampen the rapid growth of the region's economies, which are a key driver of the rise in crude futures. The International Energy Agency warned earlier this month that growing demand for energy in China and India will boost the world's oil needs by more than 50 percent by 2030, and that there could be an oil supply crunch by 2015.

Countries such as China, which puts price caps on fuel in order to protect the poor and curb inflation, have been forced to raise diesel and gasoline prices by 10 percent recently to curb demand at a time when refiners say they are losing money due to the price controls.

Also in Singapore, Philippine Trade Secretary Peter Favila said Southeast Asian countries discussed the rise in oil prices, but that the countries had not come up with any recommendations on how to address the issue.

Favila said the Philippines is placing greater emphasis on finding alternative, renewable sources of energy.

"We're putting much emphasis on renewable energy," he told reporters. "We need to negate the effect of an increase or a high oil price because 40 percent of our requirements are imported."