Photo: Berardo62. Cropped. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ During the 1990s, the oil price was around $10-20 a barrel. Petrol was cheap and SUVs and gas guzzlers were selling in record numbers. Oil company share prices were low and there was next to no oil exploration. Yet wells from the North Sea to Saudi Arabia were still producing oil — after all, once an oil well has been drilled, the costs of actually pumping out hydrocarbons are marginal. A perfect theory? But since there were few discoveries of oil, and as current reserves dried up, production inevitably fell. Round about the turn of the century, inventories started to slide and oil prices began to rise. These rises gathered momentum and soon the oil price was reaching all-time highs, peaking at $147 a barrel. The effects of these high commodity prices rippled around the world. The shares of companies like BP (LSE: BP.), Shell (LSE: RDSB) and Petrofac (LSE: PFC) soared. Lord Browne, at that […]