If oil wasn’t topping procurement’s agenda at the turn of the year, it certainly is now. Over on his spendmatters blog Jason Busch tells readers how Friday’s price surge – which even in these turbulent times caught most people on the hop – saw the cost of crude rise near to a potentially ruinous $140-a-barrel.

Hardly music to procurement’s ears given that a recent CIBC World Markets Report claimed that once oil hit $120 a barrel, “Every 10% increase in trip distances translates to a 4.5% increase in transportation costs.”

Busch uses the example of the cost of shipping a container from Shanghai to the eastern seaboard of the US having risen 250 per cent since 2000 (when oil prices were a relatively benign $20-a-barrel).

Clearly the latest price hikes are going to put more pressure on those organisations that lean heavily on global sourcing. Any further rises and they may start to ask, if they haven’t already, if the strategy is really delivering the results it once did.