With crude oil prices hovering around $100 a barrel, the developed and developing nations may be staring at challenges ranging from rising inflation and weakening of dollar to faltering growth and falling interest rates.

With crude prices skyrocketing in the last two years, any news related to oil is making importing countries keenly watch the developments and interpret them carefully. Making statements like "Supply disruptions of oil send shivers down the spine irrespective of the state of an economy—developed or developing" does not seem to be an exaggeration at this moment. This highlights the kind of role oil is playing in the global economy and the countries' increasing dependence on it, which is making them more vulnerable to every rise in oil prices.

Spiraling oil prices have been posing inflation-related challenges to various nations over the years, weakening the dollar in recent times, and thus diluting the purchasing power of their dollar-holding reserves. This is further aggravating the balance of trade in the oil-producing nations. The severity of record high oil prices, backed by a weakening greenback, though slowly on the wane, is giving birth to a perilously complex situation that is affecting both the oil producing and importing nations.

Interestingly, the impact of oil pricing was not truly felt, barring a few instances, despite acute supply shortages during World War II. For the time being, attention of the most of international intellectuals and the participants in the value chain linked to crude oil and its associated products is focused on the movement of oil prices, as the commodity is continuously lingering near the triple digit mark ($100 a barrel) for quite sometime now.

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