While western countries have so far managed to avoid recession despite a trebling of oil prices, economists fear the surge is fuelling imbalances in the world economy and increasing the threat of a financial crisis.
Oil prices touched a historic peak of 70 dollars a barrel over the past week, just ahead of the International Monetary Fund's Spring Meetings starting April 22.
In Washington, the IMF is expected to deliver a warning about the more pernicious effect of persistent high oil prices, according to early extracts of its Spring 2006 World Economic Outlook.
Global current account imbalances are likely to persist for longer than if oil were, "heightening the risk of a sudden, disorderly adjustment," according to the report.
"In some ways, this is the third act in the saga of imbalances," said Raghuram Rajan, research director at the IMF.
"In the first act in the late 1990s, foreign capital was attracted to the United States causing a counterpart current account deficit. In the second act, expansionary policies in the US caused the deficit to widen," he added.
"And in the third act, which is what we are seeing now, higher oil prices will widen existing global current imbalances and prolong them."
Warnings of the kind from the IMF are not entirely new.
But with little sign that oil traders are likely to temper their ardour as long as international tensions over Iran - OPEC's second largest oil producer - persist, economists believe the situation is increasingly fraught.
"The likelihood of a bond market crash has increased considerably in recent months and there is a joint risk of a slide in the dollar," Veronique Riches-Flores, chief economist at the French bank Societe Generale, said.
The persistent rise in oil prices is "a major risk for bond markets and consequently a major risk for the world economy," she added.
Meanwhile, the United States is relying on the huge dollar reserves held by Asian central banks and oil producing countries - nations with big current account surpluses - to finance its deficit. Without them, the US currency would lose a crucial prop and could collapse.
High energy costs account for about half of the deepening of the US deficit between 2001 and 2005, according to the IMF.
Last year the US current account deficit reached a record 804.9 billion dollars, equivalent to 6.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
"The big fear is a chain reaction that would start with the external creditors of the United States, especially the central banks," said Antoine Brunet, chief economic strategy at HSBC CCF bank.
Brunet points to the recent surge in the price of gold, a traditional refuge for investors. Gold reached the 600 dollar-an-ounce mark during trading in London over the past week, its highest level for 25 years.
"It's a sign of concern about inflation and about the US external deficits," he emphasised.
Brunet also believes that the US Federal Reserve has betrayed an underlying concern by "over-reacting" to the threat of inflation with repeated interventions to raise interest rates.
That is aimed at warding off the threat of two simultaneous blows to the market, inflation as well as foreign trade imbalances, he said.
"All this is obviously not only down to oil, but it's clear that, in the current context, oil represents a far greater risk than anything else we've seen in recent years," Roche-Flores explained.
Societe Generale's chief economist said it was "difficult" to imagine a smooth way out of the current situation.
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