Daniel Yergin

If they don't ease more oil into the market over the next six weeks, we could see prices spike a good deal higher than they are now.

Depending on what we learn in the next few days this may be the biggest oil-supply shock since the 1970s. We are now in the days of reckoning.

This is the fifth time that we're supposedly running out of oil,

In real terms, consumers today are paying considerably less for gasoline than they did during World War I.

This is not the first time that the world has 'run out of oil. It's more like the fifth. Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of the oil industry.

You'll have innovators and entrepreneurs and people trying ideas that may seem sensible today or may seem way out. But out of that whole soup will emerge some new ways of doing things.

Gas prices are clearly reaching a level where it's a political problem for people, ... unless you empty the reserve, it is a very temporary expedient. It does not affect the basic supply-and-demand problem.

I think we've seen a change in the mentality of the senior management of the oil industry over the last few months,

The last time before this time was in the 1970s, when people thought we were going to fall off the oil mountain and live in an age of permanent shortage. Since then, world supplies have increased 60 percent. I don't see why we're at the end of technology now, or why it would be finished now.

There are ample supplies beneath the surface of the planet to have significant growth in oil supply for quite a number of years. The technology is there, the resources are there. But the real question is what happens above ground.

A lot of consumers, particularly in New York and other places, are already seeing 3 a gallon. I think the question is will most consumers be seeing 3.50 and 4 At this point it's a real possibility.

This further underlines the need for greater diversity of supply and more storage capacity for natural gas.

This further underlies the need for greater diversity of supply and more storage capacity for natural gas. Gas-importing countries will recognize the need to build in buffers.

Ethanol is mandating additional diversity to the pool of motor fuels. The definition of oil is being widened.

Fourteen months ago, oil seemed to be in a bull market then Asia collapsed, ... This is basically a gross domestic product crisis driven by Asia, so the real prospects are whether you think Asia by the year 2000 will start showing signs of recovery.

Everywhere in the world, moving from control to decontrol of prices creates turbulence and also political costs.

Whereas they used to have a higher price range, say 17 to 21 a barrel, now people say prices could be at 11, 12, 15 for a long time, or at least you can't bet your company that they are going to be higher, and that has led to this powerful motive to merge as the next stage of getting your costs under control and spreading them out over a larger base.

This is a long-lead-time business the investment horizon is five, 10 or 20 years. There's no switch to pull.

When you adjust it for inflation, a year ago we were looking at gasoline prices that were cheaper than they had been during the Great Depression. So it was an extraordinary bargain.

Within four or five years the US might be getting 10 percent of its gasoline from ethanol - that would be like creating a new Indonesia.

We experienced similiar fears in the 1880s, at the end of World War I and II. And we ran out in the 1970s.

We are living in a different world now. You can see it everywhere in international relations It was noteworthy that, after his visit to Washington, the Chinese president's next stop was Saudi Arabia.

This has a lot to do with the unrest in Nigeria, but also with the production loss after the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, the decline in Iraq since the 2003 war, and the decline in Venezuelan output since 2002.

The starting point for energy security today as it has always been is diversification of supplies and sources.

The Russians are turning east to the Chinese - to the Europeans' surprise. It always seemed to me that the relationship between Russia and China would shift from being based in Marx and Lenin to being based in oil and gas.