Oil companies in "long-term liquidation"

There's an interesting story in today's Independent on Sunday about BP and Shell being rumoured to consider a merger (see here). The upshot of this is that it appears by 2015 - less than 10 years away - we'll have a global energy crisis on our hands due to a massive gap between supply and demand. It'll be interesting to see if the likes of Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP and Total will attempt to evolve by branching into other forms of energy production or whether they'll find themselves bankrupt within a decade.

It all suggests that now is the time for these companies to stop trying to find new reserves of a dwindling stock and to develop new energies - and yes, I mean alternative energies. It would be ironic if there was truth in the belief that the likes of Exxon have been buying up alternative energy technologies just to suppress them, only to find that by doing so they sealed their own fate. I would humbly suggest that if they are sitting on technological innovations, now might be the time to perform their Damascus-like conversion to a more sustainable way of life...