Within 10 years, the world will begin to run out of its principal fuel. Oil industry executives and government energy planners acknowledge that we are rapidly approaching the point where the global output of oil will begin to contract sharply as the demand for petro-energy products becomes even more acute. Put simply, a consensus has formed in recent months that some time soon - between 2005 and 2010 - the supply of conventional oil energy will at first be outstripped by a surge in world demand. Soon after that the real volume of output will begin to shrink abruptly even as demand goes a bit higher. The supply cutoffs and soaring prices of the Opec crunches of 1973 and 1979 will be dwarfed by comparison.