Many people have marveled at Orwell's prescience.  It's jaw-dropping, and lends some credence to the suggestion that he was a pretty high-level insider who may or may not have fallen out of favor.  Being formally a student of one of the Huxleys doesn't harm the suggestion either.  Huxley and Blair even communicated about who's book was 'better' insofar as how it maps (or will map) to physical reality.  I'd give the edge to Huxley getting it more right even while, as a work of literature, Brave New World was shit.  Reality seems to be a hybrid and both books seem to have 'nailed it' on a lot of important things.  Anyway...

I'm sure that many people have mused about how Europe could be engineered out of 'Oceana' and into 'Eurasia' thus fulfilling Orwell's 'prophecy'.  Leaving 'Airstrip-1' as a part of Oceana of course.  Looks like we are getting ready to find out.

Maybe Orwell just had enough of a casual interest in Geology to identify the primary hydrocarbon resources, and that was enough to make some good guesses.