The Silent Oil Crisis

The 25th August 2005 saw the price for a barrel of oil pass $68, just $12 from that high. Somehow strong Western economies have shrugged these prices off and we are left asking whether anything has really changed for the major industrial economies so dependent on cheap oil?

So maybe everything is fine until that $100 barrel mark. People talk of an oil crisis, but surely, since we are waiting for the $100 barrel, there is nothing to worry about. Right? Wrong. Around the world, silent to us, the oil crisis has truly begun. They are at the beginning of what some are calling 'The Great Decline'.

Just as rising sea levels threaten to flood low-lying lands unable to protect themselves, rising oil prices threaten countries with weak (low-lying) economies. Rising oil prices are a rising tide, and there are many examples to look at.

The signs of an oil crisis are already here in the UK, in Europe and also in the US, even if is still too inaudible to be heard as a serious warning by the general public. However, France's prime minister, Dominique de Villepin is already giving that very warning when he told a news conference on the 16th August 2005 that, "This crisis, we know, is likely to last. All the factors have come together for oil to remain expensive in the years and decades to come," he said.

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