The oil story:

History of economic growth can be traced with oil consumption levels. All figures are in thousan barrels per day of consumption.

	1985	2005
North America	18535	24875
Europe-Eurasia	22235	20350
Asia-Pacific	10464	23957

Russian Decline
	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
	4910	4972	5017	4967	5077	5015	4888	4597	3875	3359	3025	2686	2689	2554	2625	2583	2566	2606	2645	2714	2753
American Growth
	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
	15726	16281	16665	17283	17325	16988	16713	17033	17236	17719	17725	18309	18621	18917	19519	19701	19649	19761	20033	20732	20655

Gulf War
	1986	1987	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997
Kuwait	162	158	153	149	109	72	110	102	124	130	126	139
Asian Financial Crisis
	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001
S. Korea	2373	2030	2178	2229	2235
Pakistan War with India,1971
	1969	1970	1971	1972	1973	1974	1975
Pakistan	93	92	87	72	74	79	83

Comparison of economies

If two economies have to be compared, one of the neutral indicators is the oil consumption levels.
(in thousand barrels daily)

Compare India and Brazil

Year 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 Brazil 314 344 355 425 471 530 590 675 India 253 283 291 326 394 392 416 448

	Year 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 Brazil 838 907 940 1006 1030 1125 1190 1155 1117 India 474 464 476 502 541 588 633 643 696

Year	1982	1983	1984	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989	1990
Brazil	1129	1089	1093	1116	1211	1242	1271	1292	1274
India	726	765	822	895	943	974	1069	1164	1211

Year	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997
Brazil	1289	1328	1354	1418	1498	1601	1729
India	1233	1296	1313	1413	1580	1700	1828

Year	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
Brazil	1800	1879	1855	1896	1853	1785	1776	1819
India	1963	2134	2254	2284	2374	2420	2573	2485

The effect of economic reforms in India since 1991 is clearly visible. Also the debt crisis in Brazil in 1980's led to a recession, and the the statistics speak for themselves.