But eventually it’s a question of access: Getting access to fields is on top of the oil companies’ agenda. We see a substantial build-up of supply occurring over the coming years.

We have high crude prices. We have low inventories. We have strong demand. All of that would be a recipe for a taut market even with refineries (running at full capacity).

The author points to the impact of what he called Dutch disease, where the discovery of found wealth from a particular commodity causes a culture to atrophy with respect to work ethic and broader development....

But look at Angola: The Chinese spent a lot of money to get in there, but they are among many other companies. It is a much bigger game.

We are living in a new age of energy supply anxiety.

If they don’t ease more oil into the market over the next six weeks, we could see prices spike a good deal higher than they are now.

First, we have to find a common vocabulary for energy security. This notion has a radically different meaning for different people. For Americans it is a geopolitical question. For the Europeans right now it is...

Particularly the East Coast could soon be teetering on the edge of shortage.

I think we’ve seen a change in the mentality of the senior management of the oil industry over the last few months,

We experienced similiar fears in the 1880s, at the end of World War I and II. And we ran out in the 1970s.

People always underestimate the impact of technology. To give you an example: In the 1970s the frontier for offshore development was 200 meters, today it is 4,000 meters.

This further underlies the need for greater diversity of supply and more storage capacity for natural gas. Gas-importing countries will recognize the need to build in buffers.

In a couple of years, the Chinese will be seen as regular participants in international industry. Their companies have to report to shareholders as well as to the Chinese authorities. They need to make money,...

This is a summit with Yeltsin in a post-Yeltsin era. There’s the complexity of dealing with a leader that may pass from the scene quickly, even though he doesn’t intend to.

Depending on what we learn in the next few days, this may be the biggest oil-supply shock since the 1970s. We are now in the days of reckoning.

Within four or five years the US might be getting 10 percent of its gasoline from ethanol – that would be like creating a new Indonesia.

The Russians are turning east to the Chinese – to the Europeans’ surprise. It always seemed to me that the relationship between Russia and China would shift from being based in Marx and Lenin to...

This further underlines the need for greater diversity of supply and more storage capacity for natural gas.

The bulk of extra supplies that could be put into the market come from two places. One, they come from other Persian Gulf suppliers, of which Saudi Arabia is at the top of the list.

In real terms, consumers today are paying considerably less for gasoline than they did during World War I.

The world oil market is in the grip of a slow-motion supply shock, in which a $70 to $75 barrel price reflects an aggregate disruption of over 2 million barrels a day.

Fourteen months ago, oil seemed to be in a bull market ? then Asia collapsed, … This is basically a gross domestic product crisis driven by Asia, so the real prospects are whether you think...

The starting point for energy security today as it has always been is diversification of supplies and sources.

There are ample supplies beneath the surface of the planet to have significant growth in oil supply for quite a number of years. The technology is there, the resources are there. But the real question...

We are living in a different world now. You can see it everywhere in international relations: It was noteworthy that, after his visit to Washington, the Chinese president’s next stop was Saudi Arabia.

We’re expecting another 20 cents more than where we are,

Everywhere in the world, moving from control to decontrol of prices creates turbulence and also political costs.

We experienced similar fears in the 1880s, at the end of World War I and II. And we ran out in the 1970s.

This is the fifth time that we’re supposedly running out of oil,

The North Sea was supposed to run out in the 1980s. Then in the 1990s. And now production is still on-line.

The Iranians know they hold high cards because of oil.

If the next weeks reveal that the losses are as large as some fear, this would constitute one of the biggest energy shocks since the 1970s, perhaps even the biggest.

This has a lot to do with the unrest in Nigeria, but also with the production loss after the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, the decline in Iraq since the 2003 war, and the...

This is not the first time that the world has ‘run out of oil. It’s more like the fifth. Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of the oil industry.

The other are the strategic, so-called strategic stocks that the United States and the other Western industrial countries have, which could put in as much as four million barrels a day of oil into the...

The president is stepping on the gas on these policies. He’s increasing the focus, and that means increasing everything from research and development spending to regulatory reform.

This is a long-lead-time business; the investment horizon is five, 10 or 20 years. There’s no switch to pull.

Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of oil.

He’s wonderful at stirring up an argument and slinging around rhetoric. … For some of these people, it seems to be a theological issue. For us, it’s an analytic issue.

A premium in the oil price of somewhere between 10 to 15 dollars a barrel reflects this heightened anxiety.

This has been pointed out … even in thrillers.

A lesson in bringing about true changes of mind and heart comes from a Japanese functionary. By day, he crunched numbers that showed his country was approaching imminent energy crisis and helped to craft policy....

Ethanol is mandating additional diversity to the pool of motor fuels. The definition of oil is being widened.

It’s extraordinary how inventive one can be with ethanol right now.

Gas prices are clearly reaching a level where it’s a political problem for people, … unless you empty [the reserve], it is a very temporary expedient. It does not affect the basic supply-and-demand problem.

Even Silicon Valley investors have put well over a $1 billion in new energy technologies.

A lot of consumers, particularly in New York and other places, are already seeing $3 a gallon. I think the question is will most consumers be seeing $3.50 and $4? At this point it’s a...

An important United Nations environmental conference went past 6:00 in the evening when the interpreters’ contracted working conditions said they could leave. They left, abandoning the delegates unable to talk to each other in their...

rising crude oil prices, low fuel inventories, strong summer driving season demand and an environmentally driven transition to new gasoline specifications are combining to keep upward pressure on pump prices.

But the key thing is that Iraq, while it’s got very large oil reserves, has marginalized itself as an oil exporter and these days its exports are only about one tenth that of neighboring Saudi...