http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/printarticle.asp?id=mwo080406"$100 Oil is the Solution
And that would be a mistake. Because as world growth comes back, and it always comes back, demand will once again rise, but traditional oil production will be peaking sometime in the next decade (if not sooner). Oil prices will rise dramatically, well beyond today's $70 range. But $100 or even $150 oil is not the problem. It is ultimately the solution.
Let's be clear. We are not going to run out of fuel for our cars. We are just going to run out of cheap fuel. When it takes $150 for a good old boy to fill up his Ford F-150, things are going to change in the US and the world.We will start to see substitution of other fuel sources for the light sweet crude oil that we are addicted to. Ethanol, biomass fuels, tar sands, shale oil, natural gas, and gasoline from coal are all possibilities at some price. Hydrogen? It is going to take very high gasoline prices to make the economics work. But for those who long for a hydrogen world, you should be careful what you wish for. Because high prices will come.
It will not be pretty, but we will muddle through, just as we did in the '70s when we had the last break point in energy. And belatedly, we will make changes."