Oil prices at $140/bbl caused plenty of debate in Bangkok this week at our Asian conference (jointly organised with ICIS). Delegates also heard from Reliance's President of Fibre Intermediates, Rajen Udeshi, on the potential for a new commodities 'Super Cycle' to be underway.
Discussing the above chart, he pointed out that the industrialisation of China and India might well cause the same disruption as the industrialisation of Europe and the USA in previous centuries. 'China and India have a combined population of 2.1bn, which is one third of the world population', he added. 'That is a lot of buying power'.