The pain of it all. How will the cartel dynasties ever survive?

Oh, yeah -- that's right:

I wonder. In the proven reserves are they counting oil that it's not economically feasible to drill for until gas hits $4.00/gallon??

In reality, it's not a shortage that drives the price of petroleum. It's the OPEC financial wizards. The same ones who cannot seem to figure out when a weekend starts, when summer starts, when a three or four-day weekend is about to hit, or when holidays occur anywhere on the planet -- that is until the day before they occur. You see, if they could, the price of gasoline would fluctuate about as much as the price for a loaf of bread does.

Today, prices skyrocket because Americans have been expecting them to -- therefore it's okay to jack the prices.

(just a personal little conspiracy theory of my own)

Anyway, seems to me that if the industry was really worried about future income, they would not be so concerned about economically infeasible drilling, and be concentrating their research on alternate sources of energy, and I mean in a very large, very noticeable way. There would be large-scale electric generators drawing power from the surf for coastal cities. The GM proposed hydrogen car would be on the lots and selling at $5000 a pop. And literally hundreds of others.

Of course, that would cut down a bit on OPEC profits and personal income for the corporate upper rungs. And, if the Western Pacific and the B&O railroads had really been all that concerned about transportation at the beginning of the 20th century, rather than control like today’s international oil barons, there would be a Western Pacific and B&O airlines today.

Dan