Competition among Iran, Russia and Qatar to Reach India's Natural Gas Market

The increasing global realization of natural gas as a relatively abundant energy is evident from available data on increasing share of natural gas in meeting world energy requirements. India is one of the countries whose dependence on imported gas are constantly increasing. With large population and growing economy, this country is a main natural gas importer. In this paper, game theory is used to model how to enter Iran, Russia and Qatar into the natural gas market in India. Due to information available for all players, each player guesses his rival strategy, and does not wait for his action. Thus, this game is assumed to be of static nature with perfect information.
Nash equilibrium solution was applied to the game among the three countries. Each player has two strategies: (1) to maintain the current market strategy and (2) the market development strategy (to enter Indian natural gas market). Due to rational behavior of three players, the equilibrium is obtained through the market development strategy. In equilibrium, players do not get the best outcome (Nash equilibrium is a balanced equilibrium, which is not established necessarily in a situation where the players have the greatest outcomes.