Oil prices and supply to lubricate the engine of world growth.

(From Irish Independent)

WITH the oil price remaining stubbornly high, the consensus tells us that oil prices will come down in the near term. However, all may not be as it seems.

Oil is no different than any other commodity or product - it depends on those twointrinsically linked characteristics of price and volume. There has been much debaterecently about rapidly rising demand and sluggish potential supply.

Such debate is not new and history is littered with experts calling the end of oil supply. During World Wars I and II, the oil price peaked on such fears.

Of course, those of us who remember queueing for petrol during 1973/74 will …