Texas Tea for You, Me, and Everybody!

We are not running out of oil. So says UW professor of Economic Geology, Eric Cheney. (Economic Geology? Never heard of it but apparently it exists.) It will just eventually cost more than anyone could probably ever afford.

It might be a heck of a lot more expensive than it is now, but there will always be some oil available at a price, perhaps $10 to $100 a gallon.

Let's see, fuel becoming scarce enough that it would be charged upwards of $100 per gallon? Call Seattlest the semantics police, but that seems "close enough for government work" when it comes to the concept of running out of oil. Cheney, who according to UW News, has "consulted extensively for government and industry", makes the same argument about oil prices that James Suriowecki just made about housing prices in the most recent New Yorker: adjust for inflation and gas prices really haven't risen all that much (for US residents at least) since "the early 20th century."

Predictably, this has been picked up by news outlets and bloggers everywhere, most of whom simply regurgitate what was in the UW press release. The more conservative realm of the blogosphere is bouncing around like an oil barrel full of monkeys, coughing up headlines like "We're Not Really Running Out of Oil" or "World's Oil Supply Is Infinite!" without discussing the price situation in any detail. However, Cheney doesn't offer any speculation as to when supply would merit $100/gallon demand. Oddly, he seemed more interested in getting his view inculcated into the public to influence "important policy decisions in the next decades, so we need to have some smart voters."