Lower oil prices with huge implications in forthcoming years seems a reasonable bet? And not just the reasons outlined by the author, but in reply to russian involvement in the middle east? Which could see the gloves coming off in the most unexpected way?

Imagine if safe, clean, cheap molten salt thorium reactors is fast tracked by the US of A and used, as it could be, to burn nuclear waste and or create billions of barrels of superior synthetic hydrocarbons directly from seawater!?

This is not theoretical but proven in proof of concept practise by the US navy aboard a nuclear powered aircraft carrier!

Imagine 50-100, walk away safe, molten salt thorium reactors tasked with producing 10 or fifteen million barrels a day of ready to use jet fuel, diesel, or petrol replacing methanol as GM or ford crack on with laser actuated miniature thorium reactors that become the principle power source in all new vehicular traffic, tractors, harvesters, cost effective desalination and irrigation pumps!

Imagine power that costs a dollar a year for the average householder, that powers not just the home, but the private transport options as well? What then of the prospects of oil producers that have little else to blackmail the world with?

Will oil prices go up?

No! Because if they do the west might respond with truly awe inspiring productions of synthetics, and possible, to end the economic blackmail that is today's energy market!

And the very best reason to force prices lower if only to delay the inevitable? In the interim, oil producing Russia's interests would be best served by exiting the Middle East, Ukraine and every other sovereign nation she has imposed her will on ASAP! And just get on with being a good neighbor and model international citizen!

Why? Because there's a lot more at stake here (hell on earth) than the pecuniary interests of malevolent miscreant oil Barons!
Alan B.

And while on the topic of energy and slightly off thread; energy security and national security are intensively linked and entwined! Without one you do not have the other! And as shown in recent events in S.A. A whole state can be rendered virtually powerless just with the toppling of a few power pylons/transmission towers!

Also jets, ships, tanks and what have you, need absolute fuel security in order to function/engage hostiles! And that fuel security is just not found, if all your refined fuels are fully imported! But would be if made from radically altered seawater and doable as proven, nuclear reliant technology!

Time for the endless information filtering through the hopelessly ignorant/prevarication/blame and responsibility shifting to cease! Along with the endless inaction it excuses, allows or promotes!

And just not obvious to a warm and comfortable hare brained political class completely reminiscent in all things, to the blind leading the blind? Or alternatively, the wilfully ignorant leading the wilfully ignorant? Or worst of all world outcomes, the (Benedict Arnolds) self serving leading the self serving Troglodytes?

The national interest? What national interest? Will somebody turn the bloody lights back on! Ooops, sorry, never mind, daddy will kiss it better!

Wadda ya mean? Smashed and broken beyond repair? Bob the builder will fix it! Yes he can!

And thus in simple childlike trust, we rely on folk who claim to know what they're doing and that it's in the national interest/aimed at improved economic outcomes for the entire nation! Rather than narrow vested interest! Which by the way, is all that made the recent debacle in S.A. possible/par for the course normality!

I mean, replace the word renewable with carbon free (cheaper than coal) alternatives and we're halfway there and in front of the cure!
Alan B.

I thought prices might rise this week after Saudi Arabia said they would cut production.