Econ 101 tells us less supply same demand means prices must go up. Maybe there are irrational factors that cancel that, such as consumer heebie jeebies. Whether future fuel prices are high or low there must at some point be less litres. I think a bellwether could be food prices, given for every kilojoule of food some 10 kJ is expended in growing, processing, packaging and distribution.

Pundits predict US fracking will flatline after 2017. Therefore Saudi Arabia will have no need to flood the market. On the other hand the 2008 GFC coincided with an oil price of $150 per barrel. Maybe it will return to $150 but various rationing mechanisms such as recession mean we use fewer barrels each year. That could mean $2/L petrol for years but fewer and fewer cars on the road.

What's missing here is the alluded to common sense!

Nations around the world will not bankrupt themselves to buy a commodity they can replace or make.

Those alternatives include biogas, made from biological waste; and as endlessly available methane; and broad scale algae production!

Most families produce enough waste to entirely power their homes 24/7, and by adding food scraps, produce a salable surplus.

However, if the stationary engine is replaced with a super silent ceramic fuel cell, that supply literally doubles, and from the same amount of methane; thanks to the 80% energy coefficient of the fuel cell.

Then there's NG, and there's hardly a vehicle plying our highways, our byways and railways that can't be tuned to run on it; or scrubbed biogas!

Then there remains the option to convert to gas powered ceramic cell driven electric vehicles, and twice as far on a single tank thanks to the doubled energy coefficient; and able to be refueled in the time it takes to take a comfort break.

Moreover, it enables overhead wires to be replaced with this inboard option, and at considerable two way cost savings!

We also have the option of producing hydrogen, either by solar conversion of water or by the once abandoned water molecule cracking method; which will produce endlessly sustainable fuel for far less than today's fossil fuel varieties!

Gm is said to be producing a new battery that will go twice as far as the lithium ion version, or over 600 clicks.

Solar thermal now competes with coal and 24/7 thanks to thorium/fluoride salts.

Both America and China are awash with NG, and Canada sits on a 1.7 trillion barrel reserve of heavy oil.

So, I don't see oil prices going up anytime soon!

The only ones hurting are those who like the Russians, can't get their recovery costs down below $10.00 a barrel, and the speculators who bought high-end oil derivatives they can't unload!?

Shale oil operators are staying in thanks to horizontal and pad drilling, which quite dramatically lowers their recovery costs!
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty a Aussie company called Ceramic Fuel Cells just filed for bankruptcy, not a good sign. Gas fired fuel cells are used for stationary heat and power but take minutes to warm up then run very hot so it helps to have another use for the waste heat. You can get a separate CO2 stream though. I wonder if fragility is another reason they haven't been used in cars i.e. they shake to bits. In contrast PEM fuel cells last a few years though need pure hydrogen fuel and platinum catalysts. You have to wonder whether the future of personal transport means driving and flying less, a lot less.

Tas, the ceramic fuel cell went offshore a couple of years back, so I'm not surprised the local company declared bankrupt, given the money they made selling the offshored patent.

And why should they worry about us, when we like on so many other important occasions, turned our collective backs on local innovators and entrepreneurs?

What evidence have you that ceramic fuel cells were actually trialed in vehicles, and actually shook to bits?

Where and when did that happen? Off road?

Perhaps they should be limited to much more stable trams and trains, until some of the extreme fragility you claim exists, are remediated!

Your preferred combination is hardly a cost effective option at this stage, and anyway, we can tune conventional engines to run on methane, and current ceramic fuel cells, are fine as replacements for stationary combustion engines!

Some of the additional energy they create, can be used to recharge the family jalopy, particularly when GM finishes trialing their new battery.

And an electric car able to be recharged up to 80% in around an hour, a price I'd be willing to pay, just to get out from under international oil cartels, who believe they hold us and our energy dependent economy, by the short and curlies!

Economies of scale will allow algae farming to make us entirely independent in much much cheaper diesel and jet fuel; as well as rescue the Murray/Darling basin and all who depend on it!

With the ex-crush waste being more than suitable for an equally sustainable ethanol industry, requiring neither arable land nor food nor additional energy inputs; and the waste from that may be a useful, high carbon, soil improver!

And you have to know that the local fossil fuel industry and oil importers are very keen on those ideas, as are those who exclusively, if covertly, serve them? Know what I mean?
Rhrosty.

Water cracking presents as the cheapest possible way to make hydrogen and given we use updated solar thermal technology, for just a few cents a cubic litre?

And given lighter than air hydrogen will rise to great heights, utilize this effect to turn a turbine or two, on its way up to any useful high ground, and then again when we have extracted the energy component, and the then pristine water can do the same on its way to the next customer.

And given our western coastline a more than suitable place to produce solar thermal derived Hydrogen, an equally promising location to improve with an enduring and extremely potable water supply, that could be reused as effluent to sustain some algae farming/ethanol production!

All that's lacking are pollies with a modicum of imagination and or future vision, but plenty more than willing Tas, to bag our best ideas and people!

And invariably know all the reasons something won't work or shouldn't be tried? Now that's how we get somewhere else fast!

You'd be forgiven for believing there is no prospect for finally getting out from under the twin yokes of foreign capital or comparatively dirty fossil fuels?

Even so, the current status quo and our complete dependence on fossil fuels and foreign capital is no longer an option!

And water cooled stationary ceramic fuel cells can be made to supply endless domestic free hot water!

Isolated Suspension seating, independent 8 wheeled moon buggy suspension and more robust construction and materials, should soften the ride enough preserve a more robust ceramic fuel cell?

Giving up on it certainly won't solve any of the current or perceived difficulties!
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty mate, the last thing we need is pollies with imagination. Far too many have imagined the global warming scare was fact. Far too many have then believed the answer to this nonexistent problem was windmills.

Windmills have proved a financial & productive catastrophe anywhere these imaginative pollies have paid, with public money, people to build them.

God please save us from imaginative pollies.

If any of these technologies are of any use economically, enterprising companies will exploit them, just as they have exploited those imaginative/gullible pollies & built windmills & a fortune at taxpayers expense.

Time for government to get the hell out of imagining things, & get on with simple management of proven, & only proven industries & technologies.

Imaginative technologies are for risk takers & entrepreneurs, a few of whom will be the exception, & make a fortune, where the majority will lose their shirts. Bureaucrats are with out a doubt, the worst people to play with things imaginative.