Availability of World Energy Resources

Energy will be a most important topic in the 1980s. The speed with which a dozen or more trends will develop will be critical. Most of these trends are interdependent and interacting, and include: - the degree of constraint on oil and gas supplies exercised by the producers, whether inside or outside the OPEC, as they each attempt to match produc- tion to their own energy needs and the funding of their own economic growth from exports, - the depth of the appreciation by industrialized countries that energy supplies will be tight and fossil fuels will be very expensive at least until the end of the century, - the actions taken by those countries to ameliorate this situation, in exploration for new oil and gas sources, in exploitation effort for new coal supplies, in acceptance ofthe need for expansion ofnuclear energy supplies, - the balancingofenergy supply and demand in centrally-planned economies, - the rate ofdevelopment within developing countries, including China, - the development and adoption ofunconventional energy sources, - the adaptation ofthe world fmancial system to new situations. These examples highlight some of the continuing problems in the energy field. These problems will be discussed in all sorts ofmeetings of all sorts ofpeople in all sorts of places and through all forms of the communication media. Other trends will materialize and take the centre of the stage, often only for a short time.