> In fact, the long-term oil outlook has changed over the last 25 yrs --
> substantially. New fields have been discovered, dramatic extraction
> techniques have been pioneered, while the experience of the 70s demonstrated
> that demand was far more elastic and conservation far more practical than
> mainstream economic opinion had previously believed. Much of the volatility
> is due to politico-economic perturbations that are of course unjustifiable.
> But much of it is not.
>
Tthe extraction techniques might be dramatic (attaching MR scanners to
drill bits that snake around sniffing out the last dregs oil etc) but
they haven't changed the big picture except they probably
ACCELERATE the depletion-rate. As for new oil
fields: where exactly? The Caspian? Don't think so.
Conservation? The fact is that per capita oil consumption in the
US is back where it was, and energy-efficiencies and reduced
energy per unit of product, have not altered the inexorable upward
demand trend.
As for the 'piliticaly unjustifiable political perturbations',
what do you mean exactly?
Mark