Sidelines | Disguised Blessing

Quote: That helps make possible intelligent tradeoffs in new fossil-fuel development (see Blowout Beneficiary) and in the mammoth commitments to alternatives being made, foremost of all, in subsidy-riddled China.What the experience of the last two years suggests is that oil has found a rough price range that is high enough to argue seriously for efficiency but still conducive to a widening global prosperity. Provocative or entertaining as a crisis-monger like T. Boone Pickens might be or, on the other end, those "optimists" who saw a fall back toward the $10-a-barrel level of the Asian financial crisis of 1998, neither picture is realistic for planning purposes.Most likely: Big Oil (and today the state oil companies are by far the biggest of all) will keep looking, drilling and sometimes spilling. And the world will keep burning the stuff while holding its collective nose.For all the latest headlines visit Forbes Asia ...
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