Oi!!! Oil prices di!!!

Despite nervous nineties, expectations are high that oil prices are about to score its first century. Waiting for that eventful day, followers of new age religions in California are gearing up their suicide tools, just as they did around Y2K and comet Hale Bopp. There are also reports from India that many Hindu husbands gifted oil-filled barrels to their wives on the occasion of Diwali dhanteras. For the approaching Thanksgiving Day, gas kiosks, instead of shopping malls, are gearing up for the expected stampedes of the shopping-crazy. As for me, I am just cutting down on oily food.

The preparations for such an event have been going on for long even though a good many of us had earlier laughed at Goldman Sach’s and the fortune teller Bejan Daruwala’s predictions. Anyone who doesn’t live in high rise apartments has dug up his backyard in search of oil. As for those who live in high rise apartments, they have dug up public places and put up shopping malls after they realized that there was no oil down there. For the last two years, MBA aspirants have been discussing oil prices over lunch. Communist parties worldwide have been calling for agitation against this supposed profit mongering by oil majors, but sympathizers found it too expensive to travel to the venue of the protest. And despite the Spanish king’s last ditch attempt to calm oil markets by publicly asking Hugo Chavez to shut up, there seems little hope that prices will fall much from current levels. So John Howard, the Australian PM, who had earlier pleaded to his countrymen to pray to the God’s for rain is planning to ask them to offer new prayers hoping for a oil price reduction.

How will the world look like once oil prices reach $100? In some places like India, it would turn more peaceful as rebels think twice before hurling petrol bombs. In other places like Darfur and Myanmar, it will be business as usual as peacekeepers and intermediaries continue cost cutting measures by avoiding flying to those regions. Given that oil is reaching a luxury item status, we will soon have Gucci, LVMH barrels. Swiss watch makers will trade in oil with punchlines like, “You never actually own a Patek Philippe barrel, you merely look after it for the next generation”.