The lead article, It's Still the One by Daniel Yergin (chair, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates), describes recent price volatility as part of the new age of oil with three defining characteristics: globalization of demand, the rise of climate change as a political factor shaping decisions on how we will use oil, and the drive for new energy technologies to replace oil. The cast of characters in the oil business has also grown and changed: "big oil" no longer means the traditional global oil companies, but much larger state-owned companies which, along with governments, today control more than 80% of world oil reserves ("15 of the world's 20 largest oil companies are now state-owned"). Both the U.S. Department of Energy and the IEA project that, even accounting for efficiency gains, oil will continue to provide 30% or more of world energy in 2030. "Some talk today about 'the end of oil.' If so, others reply, we are entering its very long goodbye." Careful examination of the world's resource base - including Yergin's analysis of more than 800 of the largest oil fields - indicates that "the resource endowment of the planet is sufficient to keep up with demand for decades to come." [NOTE: Yergin is the author of the widely acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (Simon & Schuster, new edition with a new epilogue, 2008).]
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