There are additional important points that has very significant political and strategic implications.
1) Oil is an industrial commodity. Like other industrial commodities the price is weak because the world is in a serious recession. Demand is not strong. Until the world starts producing hard goods, generates more electricity and literally gets moving, demand will remain weak and growth sluggish
2) It is not likely that the West will ever be subjected again to a 1974 type oil embargo. Oil producers are more dependent than ever on the hard currency they obtain from sales to sustain themselves. Without the hard currency many would starve or wither. There would be political instability. Oil producers will beat a path to the door of anyone with hard currency and a willingness to purchase their oil. Oil producers such as Saudi Arabia are losing their coercive trump card. Despite their still real “wealth” they are far weaker players on the world stage.
3) New technologies such as fracking and shale oil extraction techniques are profitable at the $40-45/ barrel level. Producers can be up and running very quickly. If somehow, no oil came to the US from abroad, the US theoretically is quite self sufficient. American foreign policy is not constrained by the energy realities of the 1970s, 80’s and 90’s.
3) New technologies such as fracking and shale oil extraction techniques are profitable at the $40-45/ barrel level. Producers can be up and running very quickly. If somehow, no oil came to the US from abroad, the US theoretically is quite self sufficient. American foreign policy is not constrained by the energy realities of the 1970s, 80’s and 90’s.
Who told you that?