Originally Posted by MaxQ

For what it's worth....oil (Brent) has averaged over $100/BL for some years now.
In spite of oil prices north of 100, world oil production has been flat. (rising about 1% in that time period). It is beginning to look as though the world economy can't absorb any higher price without going into recession. We have basically an economic oil extraction governor.
Here's the rub...it takes 100/bl oil just to keep what we have going. (4 to 10% additional oil production is required EACH YEAR to replace the drop in production from existing fields.) The 7 major publicly held oil companies are drastically reducing their capital investment ...starting this year...as they have found diminishing return in new oil.
In order to continue to bring new production on line, oil producers need higher prices (the cheap oil has already been exploited...we are trying to extract oil in extreme conditions, which takes lots and lots of money). The current prices aren't high enough to support the ever increasing difficulties in production. Unfortunately any higher prices will tank the world economy.....for the near term, and possibly long term, check and mate.
We are going to need a lot less pilots as we bump up against these natural limits to growth.