Clearly, the Chinese need the resources, but I don't think they want to clash with the industrial world which happens to be the market for their goods.

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

So the major obstacle to the development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics, investment and technology.

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

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

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 Arabia.

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.