Our knowledge of the physical and technological world is far in excess of James Watt's day when he spearheaded the industrial revolution. There has been no game changing technological developoment in decades, what there has been is refinements to existing technologies producing smaller gains for ever bigger investments. Billions have been poured into fusion technology and for all practical purposes nothing has come out of it. Nothing short of discovering dilithium crystals and the warp drive will be a game changer. Forties for BP and Brent for Shell were huge reservoirs, their production rates today are a fraction of their heyday. Apache might be sqeezing more out today than when they bought Forties from BP but it is a trickle compared to 30 years ago.
