Derek Brower, DOHA: It’s safe to say the oil industry doesn’t expect a sharp drop in crude prices any time soon. The mood at the World Petroleum Congress, a tri-annual oil and gas jamboree that styles itself as “the oil industry’s Olympic games”, is buoyant. Doha, the Qatari capital playing host this week, is putting on a good show.
Mammoth corporate stalls, some of them bigger than small houses and all of them serving up big dollops of self-congratulation, fill a giant exhibition hall.
With the congress under way, Qatar and its countless construction cranes feel far from Europe, where chronic sovereign debt problems still trouble the euro and economic optimism is plummeting.
And despite claims to be a carbon-neutral conference, the congress feels even farther away from Durban, where international negotiators are trying to agree a strategy to control greenhouse gas emissions.
But for all the...