Was it a Warning

there are no lines in the gasoline stations. Conservation, the high price of oil, and a mild world recession, have reduced the consumption of oil leading to an oil glut with prices reaching the 18-20 per barrel (1990). 

But is the crisis really over Or have we just given a shot in the arm to a person suffering from an incurable disease Is, in other words, a new Entropy Watershed coming, with the oil crisis of the 1970 s serving just as a warning  

To answer this question, let us examine the energy demand and supply for the near future, year 2000, and the not so near future 2025 and 2050. The required to this purpose projection is, as expected, difficult, but it does provide a qualitative - at least - picture of Ae energy demand and supply for this period. 

To demonstrate the difficulties involved with such projections and, especially, the problems involved in meeting the demand of energy in the future, we consider first just the oil demand/supply picture for one country, the U.S., and for a short time range only, up to the year 2000. 

The global demand/supply picture up to the year 2050, based on the excellent study of Edmonds and Reilly (1985), is then discussed, while problems associated with meeting this demand are considered in the next Section. 

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