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Gasoline will never be 50 a gallon, for a number of reason chiefly that for $50 a barrel one can turn coal into diesel and light alkenes aka jet-fuel + gasoline, natural gas into methanol then to isooctane using Mobil’s MTG process over zeolites. Fisher Tropsch synthesis can be done with any source of syngas (CO+H2) be it coal gasification, biomass gasification, steam reformation of natural gas, plasma gasification of municipal solid wastes, supercritical water gasification of municipal sewage sludge the list of carbonaceous raw materials to gasify is almost endless. All economical above $3 a gallon retail. If that’s not green enough for you the brilliant people at our national labs of Los Alamos and Sandia have both come up with ways to take CO2 from the air and hydrogen from water and make liquid fuels. Currently the cost of retail fuel must be 4.60 a gallon for those process to be profitable but that represents the upper limit of what is technically feasible today. With the right political will 4.60 a gallon for carbon neutral fuel is possible from air and water not even the green fascists could argue about climate change when the fuel is made from CO2 extracted from air. All the other fuels I listed above are below the 4.60 a gallon point most in the 3 to 4 a gallon range. Its all about POLITICS and regulations. Then again we could just drill our deep water and EEZ, plus let refineries expand there operations and GASP maybe build a new refinery or TEN alas those are just pipe dreams since no administration is willing to stand up the hot air cult. I’m betting on CO2 plus solar hydrogen to fuel at 4.6 a gallon via the Los Alamos process as the upper limit of fuel cost going forward since its in line with the gia mother earth freaks. Then again its not about saving the planet its about control over the economy so all bets are off if Los Alamos goes commercial on Atmo-CO2 to fuels I’m sure that the green socialists will come up with some way that its bad and there for must be eliminated.