If this is considered part of the same phenomenon, then this could be very reasonably be merged with Oil price increases of 2005 into Oil price increases of 2004-2005.--Pharos 20:48, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In the United States, for instance, each $1000 dollars in GDP required 1.43 barrels of oil in 1970. In 2000 this number had fallen to 0.74.

What about inflation ? 1000 2000-dollars are worth much less than 1000 1970-dollars, so maybe the economy is actually more dependent on oil, not less.

I was wondering this exact same point also... I added the thought to the article C. Nelson 21:04, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, the late 70s had inflation in the high teens and relatively high inflation continued well into the 80s. On these oil pages, they list the highest spike as $90 in todays dollars but in the $30 range then. Also, the world economy is more suseptible to supply fluctuations (see below) because supply is so tight i.e. no easy excess capacity. Perhaps it is also true that the oil traders are becoming skeptical and don't see a glut in the market any time soon.

No economist would publish such figures without adjusting for inflation. Both figures use 1996 dollars. - SimonP 19:04, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

"Low supply of crude oil"?

Production has never been faster. It came in at 83 million barrels a day during 2004. ([1]).--Jerryseinfeld 19:04, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How much supply was lost because of the problems mentioned? Iraq (0.5 million barrels per day (mbpd)?), hurricane disruption to offshore oil platforms in the Caribbean (0.1 mpd?), Yukos (0 mbpd), OPEC spare capacity (1 mbpd?), civil unrest in Nigeria (0.5 mbpd?), problems with oil production in Norway (0.01 mbpd?)?

Uhhhh, well, supply may be larger than ever before, but so is the other side, DEMAND. Demand is rising faster than non-OPEC can keep up with and OPEC may not be able to help much either. With demand in China growing at 20% and India a close second, and good ole USA at 6%, this should be no surprise.

A historical commodity price graph that isn't inflation-adjusted is hard to read and not particularly useful. Does anyone have inflation-adjusted numbers for historical oil prices? --Delirium 17:53, May 10, 2005 (UTC)