Dr Bakhtiari, speaking to the Financial Services Institute in Sydney Australia, says that the world is now entering an era in which oil supplies can not meet demand. He reported that OPEC is already producing as much as it can with major suppliers like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait finding it increasingly difficult to meet their extraction targets.

Dr Bakhtiari also reported that new oil discoveries were small and no longer able to replace lost production. He predicted that we will soon experience a major economic impact to the massive fall off in output from the North Sea and Mexican oil fields.

"Crude oil is the master domino, when you tumble crude oil, all the other dominos tumble.", he said.

Dr Bakhtiari said he could not predict how high the price of crude oil would have to go in order for demand to fall. However, a threefold increase in crude prices within the last four years has apparently done little to effect the worlds thirst for oil.

He said, "The worst thing you can do is to panic when the prices are going to go sky-high."

He also talked of the lack of current awareness of the seriousness of the problem and said that there was going to be mass panic as the effects start to kick in.

Dr Bakhtiari claims that there are just five years left to try to plan priorities for the use of crude oil. "The problem will become the day that you cannot optimise by price, you will have to optimise by availability, so there won't be oil for everyone.", he said

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Note. There is a free conference on Peak Oil taking place in London on Sat 15th July (see  http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/). You will also be able to find discussions and workshops on the issue at both the EarthFirst! Summer Gathering and the Climate Camp taking place in August.