Mostly I agree with you Alan, except for my assumption. I don't assume it will always be that way, but for the foreseeable future I think it's a waste of time.
Probably an accurate guess.
I'm not convinced that oil prices will remain high. A week or two ago I read how new drilling techniques are showing huge deposits in the upper midwest. Whether this was a puff piece by the oil industry time will tell.
Yes, time will tell. We are doing the experiment as we speak.
US oil discoveries peaked nearly 80 years ago and US oil production peaked around 40 years ago. The industry figures are sobering: Our proven oil reserves are 19 billion barrels (in 2009 -- they were 39 billion barrels in 1970). We consume 19 million barrels per day and we produce about half of that. So we have around 2000 days of proven reserves. Estimates of undiscovered recoverable reserves (including offshore) are 134 billion barrels, which would fill our needs at the current rate of consumption for around 20 years.
There is a lot of reason to believe that the long term price trend is a lot higher than what we are seeing now.
