Asia's energy problems might disappear once the nascent Bimstec organisation - the acronym for Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Co-operation - gets going. But the Year of the Monkey started with a setback: the sudden cancellation of what would have been the grouping's first summit meeting, scheduled to be held in Phuket early next month. It fell victim to politics when Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee phoned Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra last week and said he would be unable to attend because of electoral preoccupations. The world's largest democracy is girding itself for the upheavals of mammoth parliamentary polls in March or April, five months ahead of time. Mr Thaksin preferred to wait for full attendance rather than begin without India. With 1.3 billion people and a gross domestic product of US$550 billion, Bimstec is an imaginative plan to bring countries fringing the Bay of Bengal closer together. It will link Asean, arguably the most successful international grouping after the European Union, with the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (Saarc), which made significant headway in Islamabad in subordinating political differences to economic demands. Two Bimstec countries, Myanmar and Thailand, are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The other three are in Saarc. It was Myanmar Foreign Minister Win Aung who first proposed a summit when he visited New Delhi a year ago to drum up bilateral trade. But Bimstec is really a Thai initiative. Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai was a strong advocate of linking hands across the Bay of Bengal even when Chatichai Choonhavan was prime minister; former deputy prime minister Supachai Panitchpakdi, who also held the commerce portfolio, was a supporter until his translation as World Trade Organisation chief. No one can pretend that Bimstec has lived up to aspirations. But the potential is enormous. The second ministerial-level meeting in Bangkok in 1998 identified several areas of action together with lead countries - trade and investment (Bangladesh), technology (India), transport and communication (Thailand), tourism and fisheries (Sri Lanka), and energy (Myanmar). The hope is that Bimstec will one day transform itself into another free-trade area. Energy co-operation, the most compelling incentive, received a further impetus this month when South Korea's Daewoo corporation discovered a giant gas field in the Rakhine basin, off northwest Myanmar. Apart from the South Koreans, Indian and Chinese companies are also prospecting for oil and gas in Myanmar and its territorial waters. Estimates of reserves vary, but some sources suggest Myanmar might have 51 trillion cubic feet of gas and more than three billion barrels of oil. Bangladesh, too, floats on a sea of gas that might exceed proven estimates of 16 trillion cubic feet. India and Thailand are Bimstec's principal energy importers. In fact, the Thais already buy natural gas from Myanmar's Yadana field. But only three of the country's 14 geological sedimentary basins are worked. The transAsian pipeline must be properly developed before Myanmar can supply other Asean and Bimstec countries. Myanmar can also help industrialise India's energy-starved northeast with cheap power. So can Bangladesh, whose geographic isolation rules out any other buyer. But sensitivities are so acute that when Inder Kumar Gujral was Indian prime minister, he advised then Bangladeshi prime minister Hasina Wazed to sell the gas via an American consortium. 'Let them take their 10 per cent,' he said. 'Otherwise, we'll both be subject to too much political pressure.' Bimstec's collective co-operation is expected to act as a solvent for political reservations. Ministerial meetings in Bangkok, Dhaka, Colombo and New Delhi stressed the need for open skies, east-west roads and railways, development of the Mekong River's resources, improved agriculture, protection of marine wealth, environmental stability, stronger banking and streamlined Customs. 'I am no visionary,' Thai Deputy Foreign Minister Sukhumbhand Paribatra declared at one meeting. 'My vision of a strong, dynamic and open Bimstec is not based on wisdom, but simple reason and logic.' So is the dream of unimpeded economic co-operation and the free passage of goods and services through a vast swathe of Asia from the Hindu Kush mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The temporary setback of a cancelled summit must not be allowed to dim that vision. Sunanda Kisor Datta-Ray is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. The views expressed in this article are those of the author