[nonkultur]

If over $50 a barrel is anything near permanent. We would be seeing dozens of coal liquification plants opening for synthetic petroleum.

[machman]

Exactly. Same thing in the late 70's and early 80's. People actually believed it then, and stuff started to get built. We aren't running out of oil, but we are near the end of really really cheap oil. There are massive oil shales, synthetic possibilities, etc., but they are only economical at a price that is higher than we have seen in the past 20 years.

[Sooth2222]

...a gallon of gasoline is still cheaper than a gallon of milk or the bottled water in the cupholder.

Maybe it's time to buy a new SUV, not a hybrid!

[ARCADIA]

If over $50 a barrel is anything near permanent.

It is not the rising oil prices that bother me; its the ever shrinking dollar that expresses itself as a rise in oil price. If we don't start manufacturing soon we are going to need a wheelbarrow of dollars to buy a gallon of gas.

[Malsua]

If over $50 a barrel is anything near permanent. We would be seeing dozens of coal liquification plants opening for synthetic petroleum.

The break even on that is around $60/barrel. With Efficiencies, that may be possible at $50, but $60 is the magic number.

I'll also just add that Saudi Arabia is maxxed out on the sweet crude...their extra production is sour crude. That doesn't help anything. There simply aren't enough refineries that can deal with the high sulfer crude out of SA or even Iraq for that matter. We really need to get back to coal/steam and solar to ween ourselves off of oil imports.

[Law is not justice but process]

I don't think we would have to turn to anything so expensive as coal liquefaction. IF high prices are seen for the long term there are plenty of high production cost petroleum wells that could be drilled still at a lower cost than using coal to create "synthetic" oil (e.g. d very deep offshore wells, very deep in the earth wells, oils shales, etc.). The fact that oil companies are not beginning to drill those higher production cost wells indicates they do not think high prices will last. Watch the rig count: it has barely budged since oil prices began rising. I believe the current price increase is 70% market manipulation and maybe 30% increased demand from China and India (notice how petroleum demand in the Western world has decreased with the end of driving season but the price has continued to skyrocket).