You won't ever see that and in fact it would be bad news. New sources of oil like tar sands and shale oil need prices above the $50 range to be profitable. The sooner we can exploit those to their fullest potential the sooner we can cut some ties to the middle east.
"You won't ever see that and in fact it would be bad news. New sources of oil like tar sands and shale oil need prices above the $50 range to be profitable. The sooner we can exploit those to their fullest potential the sooner we can cut some ties to the middle east."
I agree. While I hate the price at the pump, I hate it more that our enemies are using oil revenues to spread "kill the infidel' mosques and building weapons to kill us.
I basically hijacked another thread disputing that so I might as well dispute it here too. The cost of oil sand, oil shale, coal based gas, etc, are all based on abundant and subsidized (in many cases free) energy. Just like paying farmers to waste energy planting, fertilizing and harvesting corn, these schemes are basically just ways for people to make money from the government. They don't all waste energy as transparantly as ethanol, but they all have subsidies needed for profitability. A basic rule of thumb for an energy source is it should use its own energy to produce itself in at most 1:2 ratio. That allows for other energy inputs like the workers and machines and still leaves some room for profit.
The bottom line, some energy sources are not profitable even at infinity per barrel, and most are double the current crude price (i.e. $140/barrel today).