At the turn of the millennium oil remains the most valuable commodity to be traded around the world and it is likely to remain a mainstay of the world’s energy mix for many decades to come.

Petroleum has partly defined the 20th century. It fuelled the unprecedented explosion of individual mobility that the automobile and aircraft have brought to hundreds of millions of people and it contributed to a revolution in modern warfare.

For much of the century oil demand was a barometer of industrial and economic development. In the post-war period from 1945 to 1973 commercial energy demand rose by an average of 5.5% a year in the non-Communist world, reflecting the rapid economic expansion of the era. In recent years the underlying world oil demand growth rate in industrialized countries has slowed to a more modest 2% but it is forecast that the demand for oil will grow again through to 2020.