{"id":271,"date":"2007-08-11T14:24:12","date_gmt":"2007-08-11T14:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.energyrefuge.com\/blog\/falling-oil-prices\/"},"modified":"2017-09-05T17:54:57","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T21:54:57","slug":"falling-oil-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.energyrefuge.com\/blog\/falling-oil-prices\/","title":{"rendered":"Falling Oil Prices"},"content":{"rendered":"

oilI was recently reading in Barron’s (8\/6\/07) that some people expect the price of oil to drop. Joel Kurtzman from the Milken Institute thinks that the current prices are not sustainable once Mid-East fears calm down. Brent Heminger from Total Intelligence Solutions thinks that oil prices will not hit the high of $100 per barrel expected by Goldman Sachs. These people are looking out to 2009 which is surprisingly closer than I ever thought it was.<\/p>\n

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What does this do to the alternative energy market, innovation and investment? If oil falls back to pre-Iraq levels of $33 per barrel (or even to a more realistic $50 per barrel), what will the incentive for pursuing alternative energy be? Is global warming and national security concerns enough to reduce our use of oil?<\/p>\n

I don’t think it will be. <\/p>\n

There will be a slowdown on innovation if this occurs, but maybe some farsighted people will not want to be held randomly hostage to events and work to free us from this.<\/p>\n

At best, lower oil prices will give us the time to prepare for a future shortage in oil, and at worse we will squander this time as we have in the past and worsen the environment with more pollution. But I hope that global warming is becoming viewed as a real threat and whether or not it is caused by human activity, I am confident there are things we can do to slow its progress.<\/p>\n

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