My lesson in economics of oil

That noise you hear is the clatter of horses’ hooves. The horses come from the last chapter of a 2000-year-old book that still outsells the similar, though worse-written, Harry Potter.

They are the Horses of the Apocalypse. And they have names. Those names are The, and Price, and Of, and Petrol. Oh, hear those drumming hooves. Oh, feel that hot breath on your neck.

But before they herd us over the Cliff of Extinction into the Chasm of Bones, let us try to be calm and anatomise the four dread beasts. And who better to do so than one of those readers of the contemporary tea leaves, an economist?

So, regardless of expense