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IN AUGUST 2005, President Bush asked me to undertake a diplomatic mission to Algeria and Morocco to facilitate the release of the longest-held prisoners of war in the world: 404 Moroccan soldiers, some of whom had been held since the 1970s by the Polisario Front operating out of Algeria. While in the region, I took the opportunity to visit Libya to help move forward the process of normalizing relations between the United States and Libya, and met with senior officials, including Muammar Qaddafi.

But this trip also brought me face to face with the new reality of global economic life. The hotel where I stayed in Tripoli, the Corinthia, was filled with representatives from China, India and Western oil companies who were in Libya to stake out drilling or refining options in this newly opened oil frontier, which has proven reserves of 39 billion barrels-more than Mexico or Nigeria. The world had come to the Corinthia hotel to compete for the energy opportunities that Libya's expected return to the international mainstream has made so promising.

I had observed the same thing in Algeria, which also has significant reserves of oil and natural gas. Wherever there are proven energy supplies and a government willing to bargain, one can find similar conclaves of oil and gas prospectors.

In particular, the Chinese and the Indians, with one-third of the world's people between them, know that their economic futures are tied to finding sufficient energy resources to sustain their rapid economic growth. China now trails only the United States in global energy consumption; India is further behind, but its population and energy demand are growing rapidly. Chinese and Indian firms are negotiating with anyone willing to sell them an energy lifeline-including regimes, such as Sudan, Burma and Iran, with poor human rights records or records of supporting terrorism.

WITH LESS than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States consumes 25 percent of the world's supply of oil. But demand for oil is increasing far more rapidly than we expected even a few years ago. By 2030 the world will be consuming 50 percent more energy than it does today.

For Americans, the gasoline price spikes following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita brought home the tenuousness of short-term energy...