Energy and the new world power play

..We learned from British archives released a couple of years ago that in 1973, the US drew up a plan to seize oilfields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi in response to the Arab oil embargo.

For decades the aim of securing oil has been realised.

It is only now, with the drying up of oil a prospect over the next decades, that new worries are coming to the fore.