The world has plenty of oil (WSJ)

That's the title of an op-ed piece in Tuesday's Wall St Journal. It's something I'd like to believe, especially every time they deliver furnace oil, or fill up the car. To bad the author doesn't give any numbers that support his idea. The world is burning 86 million barrels per DAY right now. Emerging industrial superpowers China and India are going to increase that by a lot. But even this optimistic article (the writer is in the oil business) projects production of no more than 100 million barrels per day for the next 50 years. Demand is close to that today, and will surely far surpass 100 million barrels a day in a year or so. When demand exceeds supply, the price goes up until demand slacks off. That's why crude is at $104 a barrel now. Hold production level for the next fifty years, and the price will go up a lot higher.