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

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

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 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.

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.

According to one study by the United States Geological survey, 86 percent of oil reserves in the United States are the result not of what is estimated at the time of discovery but of the revisions and additions that come with further development.