This gets at the heart of the Peak Oil problem. Oil is priced at the marginal barrel. If we have 1 trillion barrels left and production and consumption are roughly equal at 84mbpd, we have $60 oil. If that same trillion barrels is somehow able to be pumped twice as fast, which means we'll be totally out in half the time, oil prices would actually plummet due to the current large excess of production over demand. A worldwide system based on an abstraction (money) and not on energy itself, will change its signal too fast to give proper warning. Because of this idiosyncracy in the market, I expect we will see both $30 and $200 in the next few years. What if (and of course its a big if) US reduces its per capita oil consumption to that of Europeans in a period of an undulating plateau? Were that the case, priced at the marginal barrel we'd go to $10-$15.

As a former (current) trader, I let the market tell me where oil is going. At some point in the next few years, we will have an asymptotic rise, which after a period of months will cause such knee-breaking demand destruction that the price will then crash, as economies swoon and people retrench. Then after a period of years it will happen again, though this time on the Hubbert downslope - thats when it will go sky high and never come back down. We are aways away from that day methinks. 2015?