corrente

Was it Jim Fish, the famous old robber baron who said, "It is gone where the woodbine twineth"?

Yet nearly 12 months after "victory" in Iraq, oil prices are at an eye-popping $38 a barrel, or about $15 above the two-decade average, and some forecasters are now offering a far less sanguine prognosis: Not only will oil stay high through 2005, but the days of cheap crude are history. These aren't exactly glad tidings for a global economy designed to run on low-priced oil, nor for a White House that gambled it could deliver low oil prices with a mix of diplomatic muscle and market liberalization.

What happened? In simplest terms, what we're seeing are the final months of a 25-year oil boom.

Many motorists and some opportunistic politicians will reflexively point the finger at greedy oil companies and nefarious "foreigners." But eventually, all of us, from the man in the Oval Office on down, may be forced to concede that the days of cheap oil are over and that the U.S. really does need an entirely new approach to energy.
(Paul Robers, "Say Goodbye to Cheap Oil via the LA Times)

Gee, you'd think a WhiteWash House that's a partly owned subsidiary of Big Energy would be able to deliver cheap oil, right? Not. And just like Iraq, everyone was done on faith, and there's no plan for when things go wrong.

Say, how's that hydrogen car coming? We haven't heard to much about that, have we?

NOTE: For why the days of cheap oil aren't coming back, see about the Hubbert Curve (back here).