Crude oil and gasoline have risen to new records as worries mount over the prospect a serious supply fallout from an Irseali attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Supply disruptions in Brazil to Nigeria are also feeding into sky-high oil prices. Crude oil prices jumped as high as $147.27. A barrel of the black goo now costs $10 more than it did on Wednesday.

Sky-high oil prices are triggering the biggest transfer of wealth in history, says Mandraaj Singh inb Profit Watch – from the US and Europe to Gulf oil economies.

Oil exporting countries alone owned foreign assets worth $4.6 trillion at the end of last year – more 1.6 times the size of the British economy.

And the phenomenon is just getting started says Manraaj. Smart investors can profit by focusing their investments on where this new pile of Gulf petrodollars is being invested..

Even if the price of oil falls back to $70 per barrel, the petrodollar economies are going accumulate foreign investments worth $10 trillion by 2013. That’s two and a half times bigger than the UK economy will be at that point. And if the price of oil stays at $100 per barrel, their oil exporters are going to snap-up $12.2 trillion in foreign assets – THREE times the size of the British economy.

Remember that this isn’t something that’s going to happen at some distant point in the future. It’s happening right now. And the figures that we’re talking about are just for the next five years.

When you look at it from that perspective, it doesn’t make much sense as an investor to focus on companies that are trying to tap into UK or European economic growth.

What we’re seeing right now is probably the biggest and fastest transfer of wealth and economic power in history, but our daily media is still focussing on UK retail sales blues and falling property prices. These are obviously serious concerns, but smart investors still have plenty of opportunities beyond these shores…

Just look at the Persian Gulf…

Zoom-in on the six Arab countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council alone and you find that they’re raking-in $1.5 billion dollars from oil exports every single day!

Over the next 14 years, the Gulf Arab countries alone are going to earn up to $6.2 trillion from oil exports, even if the price of oil falls back to $70 per barrel. That’s almost 50% below where the price of oil is today. What are the chances of that happening? Not very high, if you ask me.

But even if oil falls back to $100 per barrel, the Gulf states are going to rake in almost $9 trillion over the next 14 years.

The big question of course, is where all this money is going to end up and how do we get our slice of it?

Where’s the money going?

Traditionally, the oil exporters re-invested the bulk of their petrodollars in Western securities and assets. That’s changing fast though. A lot more of that money is now being invested at home and in the fast-growing Asian economies.

In 2002, nearly 85% of the Gulf’s wealth was invested abroad in financial instruments mostly linked to the U.S. Dollar. By 2007, though, that was down to 75% as they increasingly focussed on the Gulf itself, Asia and Africa. You can bet that that is only going to keep on rising because growth in those regions far outstrips what we’re seeing in the US and Europe.

So that’s where you’ve got to position your investments if you want to take advantage of this petrodollar bonanza. And that’s precisely what we’ve been doing on the Profit Hunter service.

You’ve only got to look at our play on the Gulf’s petrodollar boom to see that happening. This company is the Gulf’s premier alternative asset manager and made its name with take-overs of some of the best-known Western companies in the 1980’s. It still has a big Western focus. But it recently launched a $1 billion Gulf investment fund to take advantage of local opportunities.

Given the kind of returns that it’s given investors – an average 20% per annum for the last 25 years – this is about as sure-fire a long-term investment as I can think of. Just remember that that 20% figure was what it produced when oil prices were a lot cheaper than what they are now.