Originally Posted by RawAlex

At the end of the day, a fair percentage of the electricity produced in many parts of the world is made by buring fossil fuels. Moves to replace those huge consumers of oil away to other sources (including solar, wind, and even nuclear) radically changes the consumption patterns.

Further, while China is currently on a consumption upswing with the huge increase in personal car ownership, that too will level out. That type of upswing is very unlikely to be seen again.

Just with the brief runup in prices over the last 12 months, consumption habits were shifted just enough to tilt the world back into an oversupply position, such that the OPEC countries have had to cut back production to try to keep the price from (no pun intended) tanking.

At $60 per barrel, many projects that were not economically feasible at $30 are suddenly worth a look. With new drilling techniques such as the deep water action going on in the Gulf of Mexico, there is potential that the US will significantly cut it's importation of oil, which would have large scale effect on the oil market.

Ditch your SUV, get a reasonably effecient car... if everyone did that, the price of gas would come down rather quickly.

Alex