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.

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.

To meet the energy challenge requires the most important energy of all - human creativity. That's the real prize.

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 decline in Venezuelan output since 2002.

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

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

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