It is a great pleasure, and an honour, to be given the opportunity to open this Symposium. That the subject is of major and widespread interest can be shown by the impressive list of speakers who have agreed to address us in the next two days and also by the encouraging response we have had from those wishing to attend. There can, indeed, be few subjects of greater importance to our future prosperity than energy supplies. After the upheavals of the last thirteen years, in which the international oil price rose so dramatically in two major surges from 3 dollars a barrel in 1973 to a peak of over 40 dollars in 1980 and has now, since last November, fallen from 30 to 15 dollars, this point needs little emphasis. The intolerably high levels of unemployment which still plague the industrial world are at least in part a consequence of the economic dislocation which these price changes brought about; so too is the problem of excessive debt in many of the less developed countries with its serious threat to the world financial system.