Seen in the Houston Chronicle:
If you think oil and gasoline prices are high now, they may seem cheap before long, according to CIBC World Markets Chief Economist Jeff Rubin.
Rubin, who predicted three years ago that oil would reach $100 a barrel, thinks it will climb to $225 a barrel in four years. Gasoline could be around $10 a gallon by that time, he says.
It’s all about tight supplies and rising demand. Rubin points out that almost all the growth in global petroleum liquids production since 2005 has been in natural gas liquids. Those, he says, are not a useful substitute for oil and can’t be economically turned into gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.
Like that won’t aggravate the portion of the oil price mess caused by speculators paying the contango game.
At some point, a cooling global economy and changes in behaviors should ease real demand (as opposed to speculator-driven demand), right?