I think you are very pessimistic. Oil prices going up is a good thing. It will finally push for a better and cheaper renewable energy source. Im looking for a President who will finally just give the energy department a trillion dollars to fund research for the next energy source.

Just like research into the atomic bomb, we need to get our best scientists together and find a renewable energy source, and then put it into production so that it is cheap enough for consumers to pick up and replace our old energy sources.

I need to remove my retirement investments over to oil companies.

I give this thread a 9.4.

Unless something catastrophic happens, there's no way in hell we should see $260 oil for AT LEAST another 5 years. That's just not the way it works, man.

Things typically don't spiral too much out of control unless there's a massive catalyst that pushes it there.

My prediction: $90 oil by the end of the year.

What the hell? Give a TRILLION dollars? It doesn't WORK that way. Not only is that not possible, unless it's over a PERIOD of time, and certainly not THAT much, your country is SO FAR in debt that it has bigger things to worry about.

Oil is a bubble, and it will burst. Until then get used to rising prices. Maybe if your country stopped PRINTING money out their asses, the dollar wouldn't be so crippled right now.

Oil prices will continue to rise and there's no doubt it will effect the whole world, I just don't know if it will be as bad as the great depression.

The Manhattan Project cost 2 billion back in the 1940's and employed 130,000 people. To find and implement the next major way of energy, it will cost some dough. Did I say it would be all at once? It would be spread over years of research and development, and the trillion dollars would be the cap of money.

You dont realize that oil will eventually run out, and the sooner we get onto a better and more importantly, cheaper renewable energy source, we can save the rest of our petroleum for our food and consumer goods. A trillion dollars is only 1/4 of our budget every year. Spread over 8 years and funded by multiple countries, it is easily doable.

The problem with not having enough oil is that we've been "running out" since the '70's. No one knows exactly how much oil we have, the capacity we have to refine it, or how much there's left in the Earth. All we can do is speculate...

And it's those same speculators that more or less control the price at the moment. The bubble will burst, it's a matter of when.

Which is why we need to start preparing for a world without petroleum. Lets say there is enough oil to last us another 50 years, we need to start making sure now that we have enough to last a lot longer for food instead of oil for our cars.

Yes, I always preferred km/l because it lets me calculate easily the range (and it's easy to convert in mpg in forums with mixed american and non american audience).

Anyway, to make it clearer also the other way, I get from little more than 5 to little less than 9 l/100km, while little more than 4 l/100km is what Ford declares at a constant speed of 90 km/h (little more than 55mph), but I couldn't check this,italian roads are twisty and traffic is jerky, so either I must go slower, or, in highways, when I can I always go at max speed limit(130) + tolerance, ~135km/h, =~85mph, or, If the road is clear and I'm sure police can't be hidden nearby, 90-100mph (at this speed I get less than 9l/100km anyway)

 Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with you, we need to be positioned not just to survive, but to thrive when we run out of oil. This topic was originally about the price of oil, though.