I think that's an inevitable process which is going to continue so long as the Asian economies in particular continue to grow up rapidly. The biggest marginal contributer to rise in oil demand, that of course in the past 5 years has been China. I think if memory shows me correctly it counted for about a quater of the increase in , in world oil demand of the last 5 years. So consequently there is going to be increasing pressure on oil demand for some years to come. And it's ... I guess the case we're gonna have to live with is a fairly tight-jaw market which suggests that we'd probably got to have to live with oil prices at far higher levels than that we become used to over the past decade.

As far as your projections of the world economy are concerned then are you looking at 90, 100, 110 dollar a barrel?

Well I suspect that we could well hit 100 dollars per barrel over the courses of the next few months. I'm not entirely convinced that's necessarily a consequence of the strength of the world economy howerer. And you got to look at surplus out of the equation too, and OPEC has been very successful over the course of the past 12 months in curbing oil supply . and of course this tightness of the market coupled with, quite lot of speculative positioning on the part of investors has helped to drive prices up to you know 90 plus dollars a barrel.My guess is that a fundamentally justified price will simmer in the range 60 to 70 but I don't think we are gonna see that for some time to come.

OK, well we could have interesting discussions on the supply side, but let's move, look at the price and its consequences for the world economy...

Notes:

Tight-jaw: scrupulous and prudential about predicting or commentary