Oil: Shocking how vital it still is thumbnail The idea is a pretty simple one. Every now and again – amid all the swirling reports and breaking news – it is worth taking a pause and bringing together what we know about the most important resource in the world. As part of the Big Oil Drop project , I was asked a straightforward question. “Why is oil so important? And could you write about it.” It was so straightforward a question that it sounded faintly ridiculous. Well, of course oil is important, I blustered, erm, we need it to drive in our millions of cars, jobs depend on it, the supply of energy is at the heart of much of global politics (just look at Russia now), wars are fought over it, without oil the lights would go out… I tailed off, realising that yes, of course, I knew […]