This week the price of oil touched $139 a barrel, a 14-year high. International gas prices also surged to £6 a therm – 10 to 15 times their normal level.
It is too early to say how durable these enormous shocks will prove. However, both directly and indirectly, Western households, industry, farming, services and many other sectors depend on oil and gas for their transport and their electric power. They will be severely affected for as long as international markets price oil and gas at anything like these kinds of levels.
