This morning, as I was considering writing something for KnowProSE.com (which I probably will still write), I ran across Trinidad and Tobago's Energy Minister's dispute with local economists:

Energy Minister Conrad Enill disputes statements that this country could encounter hard times in the fallout from the energy policies of U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama...

Intuitively, I disagree with the Minister - but in trying to find information to discuss this intelligently, I came to realize that the data is not to be found, or found easily. The idea is simple enough, and is flawed because it would make a broad assumption - but if we were to take historical global oil usage statistics and plot them against the world population, we might have a broad brush with which to paint a picture so as to discuss this intelligently. Alas, alack, that information doesn't seem to be available anywhere - if it is, I'd love to plot that history of oil use against the world's population increases. Why?

If the World population increases at a rate higher than oil usage could potentially decrease per person, it means that the demand for oil could remain constant. And with oil supplies decreasing globally (they have to be, we've run out of dinosaurs), this would mean that oil prices would increase - thereby driving less and less use of oil. Optimistic perspectives see this as a way for a market to balance itself, but in the context of something that the planet will eventually run out of the oil market cannot balance itself in the long term.