Oil makes the world go 'round. Each day, more than 85 million barrels of black gold are pumped from the ground -- that's nearly 70 ounces for each of the 6.6 billion men, women and children on Earth.
Since January, the price of a barrel of oil has almost doubled and is now approaching $100. Blame tensions in the Middle East, speculators on a quest for profit and the hunger for energy of rising powers, including India and China.
The ripples from this price surge are washing up on every shore. It's creating new wealth in such locales as Moscow, where oil barons are almost at a loss about how to spend their riches. But the effects in some other places are less predictable. Israelis fear a rush of people will chop down trees to heat their homes. Farmers in northern Iraq are abandoning their fields to sell gas. Fishermen in France, stung by the price of diesel, have rioted.
As Californians cope with gasoline near $3.50 a gallon and other Americans brace for a winter of high heating bills, we asked Times correspondents how the skyrocketing prices are affecting their corner of the world. Here's what they found.
MOSCOW
Helping oil barons spend their wealth
What do you buy when you can have anything? At the Millionaire Fair, which opened Thursday at a sprawling exhibition center in northwest Moscow, Yelena Kudozova is trying to provide suggestions -- a lot of them, since 45,000 people with fistfuls of cash are expected to cross the red carpet over the exhibition's four days. Many are getting rich thanks to oil.
Last year, there was a private island for sale, yachts and helicopters, baby bottles made of gold and a dress sewn entirely from dollar bills. This year, the fair's 35,000 square feet of exhibition space will feature diamond-encrusted USB flash drives; two Kandinsky paintings never before exhibited in Russia; and a sneak peek at Volvo's new XC60 concept car with its six-cylinder, 3.2-liter ethanol engine (after all, gas here has risen to the unheard-of price of $3.26 a gallon).
"It is really symbolic that the time when oil prices are about to reach $100 a barrel coincides with our fair," said Kudozova, the event's director. "Russia is growing more and more influential, and it consumes more and more luxury. I can't even imagine such a fair to be held, for instance, in 1991 Russia. A Millionaire Fair in Russia at that time would have been an oxymoron!"
