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, they have to be efficient.

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

In a world of increasing interdependence, energy security will depend much on how countries manage their relations with one another. That is why energy security will be one of the main challenges of foreign policy in the years ahead. Oil and gas have always been political commodities.

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 being based in oil and gas.

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

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.

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.