Yes, it

Whatever the price of a barrel, the car industry is set to change for ever

The telephone line was crackling when Daniel Yergin called me from Kazakhstan on Friday but there was nothing unclear about his message: oil is the new gold.

It’s the new gold because the black stuff has become a hedge against the dollar, a new asset class of its own. Yergin also says the price of oil is close to reaching what he calls its “break-point”. This is when the price


Yergin’s views are always worth listening to; he is one of the world’s smartest gurus on oil and author of the Pulitzer-winning book, The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. As chairman of the US-based Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Yergin makes his gold from advising governments, companies and individuals on future energy needs. He was in Kazakhstan talking at a conference on the prospects for Eurasia