This year’s Oil Barons Ball is aiming to raise AED500,000 for the Friends of Cancer Patients charity. No mean feat, but considering some of the prizes available it’s quite possible.

Apparently 2,500 guests are expected to attend this year, who can bid for lots like a football shirt signed by the Liverpool striker Fernando Torres, an Australian pearl necklace set in 18ct white gold and finished with diamonds, a golf lesson with PGA amateur and celebrity golf tutor Claude Harmon, and a set of limited edition golf clubs from Nike as used by Tiger Woods.

All the money raised on the night goes towards FOCP, a great charity which aims to provide emotional and financial support to cancer sufferers and their families.

Organisers say the ball, now in its seventh year, will also have performances from tribute bands, the Four Tops and Dream Girls, flown in for the night from London’s West End.

No wonder it’s the oil industry’s biggest shindig of the year. The highlight of the evening, however, is the crowning of the Oil Baron – the person who’s made the biggest contribution to the sector in the past 12 months. Who will that be, we wonder? Post your suggestions below.

Details: To give an item for the charity auction or to make a donation call +971 4391 0830.

My colleague Anil Bhoyrul this week complained that the cold calling bankers of Dubai are back in business, selling credit cards and loans to anybody with a mobile phone and a job.

But if I was a banker, I’d be banging on the door of Middle East industrialists, offering colossal sums of money for upstream and downstream oil projects and related industries.

Last year’s rollercoaster ride for oil prices, which saw a peak of $147 per barrel and a trough of $35 was just the sort of extreme creasing that bank lending is designed to smooth out.

Were it not for the credit crunch, which had almost nothing to do with oil production or consumption, this is exactly what banks would have done.

Planned investment in oil and related industries should have proceeded on the basis that there is only one long term trend for oil prices, and that is up. Projects should not have been mothballed, as we saw at the tail end of 2008.

The Middle East remains staggeringly well-placed to cash in on the growth in oil demand from Asian countries (including the Middle East itself), and will do so for at least the next 40 years, according to the annual BP Statistical Review of World Energy, which was released yesterday.

2008 was the first year since 1983 when global oil consumption fell, but the report notes that this was caused by a 3.5 percent fall in consumption in advanced nations failing to offset a rise of 3.1 percent in emerging economies.

The future, according to BP chief executive Tony Hayward, will see more of the same: a long term decline in consumption by advanced nations, brought about by increasingly fuel-efficient engineering, but an accelerating growth in consumption from emerging nations with their rapid industrialisation and fast-growing populations.

Last year was the first time that consumption from wealthy OECD countries was overtaken by consumption from those outside the privileged group, by a factor of 49-to-51 percent.

By the end of 2008, BP estimated that there were 1.2 trillion barrels of oil in proven reserves around the world. Of that, 60 percent is buried right under our feet here in the Middle East; 264 billion barrels in Saudi Arabia, alone.

The BP report notes that there has been a significant world-wide move towards renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear power, but stops short of suggesting that the end of the age of oil is approaching any time soon.

In the mean time, the Middle East, and particularly the GCC, is going to enjoy a windfall that will make it the wealthiest part of the world per capita by a significant margin. Qatar and the UAE are already among the world’s top five wealthiest nations.

If you are a bank looking for customers with the means to repay enormous loans, look no further than the oil-soaked industrialists of the Middle East. It is as close as you will ever get to a bottomless well of money.