Jun. 25--The world, and Britain in particular, is running out of gas. The world and Britain is having to rely on imports from states with giant reserves but which are politically volatile or happy to manipulate the market -- countries like Russia, Iran and Qatar.

Shipments of LNG, the liquefied natural gas technology that is supposed to change the world's energy market, aren't stopping here and if they are, they are for top dollar.

All this has contrived to push up the price of gas to historic highs. It means that UK homes are paying more than £1000 a year for their household energy. It means Shell and BP report annual profits measured in the tens of billions of pounds. It means UK energy suppliers such as British Gas, E.On, npower, EDF, Southern Electric are counting their profits in the billions.

But what if this is in fact one of the greatest cons of all time?

Peak oil theorists have been scaring the world for years, arguing that we will soon be at a stage of consuming more crude than we can produce. It was a key explanation as to why oil soared to $147 a barrel last year.

However, that superspike has since been rubbished by many as the most outrageous speculative bubble since the great tulipmania of 1647 when Dutch blooms were trading at 10 times a working man's annual wages.

The story that Britain will soon become a net importer of gas as our North Sea reserves run out has been one of the single biggest factors behind our never-before-seen rising household bills. And it has fuelled the UK's headlong commitment to alternative energies such as heavily-subsidised wind-farm build, which will ensure our electricity prices remain high for years to come.

On a worldwide basis, the much quoted statistic is that there are 61 years left of natural gas. But that is lengthening, not shortening.

The recently published BP Statistical Review of World Energy reveals that even after a 35 percent increase in natural gas production over the last decade, the growth in proven global natural gas reserves is up 20 percent over the same time period (up 4.5 percent in the last year alone) and is outpacing consumption.

Much of that is Iran and Qatar. But even in the world's largest economy, US natural gas reserves are up an almost unprecedented near-50 percent since 1998.

Much of this is down to "shale gas", large reserves of natural gas in impermeable rock which prior to new technologies could not be extracted commercially and which is likely to be geologically replicated all around the world.