Canadian newspaper finds wariness that oil profits will continue

Alberta, Canada is full of the signs of continuing oil profits like new business projects and construction, according to the London Free Press. But some old-timers who remember when things crashed in the 1970s and people who study the market fluctuations say that there is a lot in common between today's high prices and the way gas prices shot up about thirty years ago. The newspaper quotes Vince Lauerman, a global energy analyst with the Canadian Energy Research Institute, as saying, "The cause of these current higher prices and energy boom, compared to last time around, are actually pretty similar, despite what some people think."
There are some differences, as the paper notes: a less-powerful OPEC controls only 40 percent of the market today; new oil sources take longer to develop now than before; there's a lot more demand from so-called developing countries; and there has been a shift in which countries are running their economies in the black or in the red.

[Source: London Free Press]