If you spoke to your friend 10 - 20 years ago, then he was right. Perhaps he imagined faster and more catastrophic dynamics, but inflation-adjusted Oil has been

If you spoke to your friend 10 - 20 years ago, then he was right. Perhaps he imagined faster and more catastrophic dynamics, but inflation-adjusted Oil has been going up since 1998 [0]. If you had taken his advice and invested in oil futures in 2009, you could have become rather wealthy :) Of course, there have been impressive price fluctuation (One happening right now). But it's kind of expected in a highly complex system where technology, politics and financial crises interact in rather unpredictable ways. On average, I still think the trend is UP (and the "fracking miracle" will be a short lived spike). Peak Oil will happen (but predicting the date or dynamics inside a 20 year range is just as hard as predicting the timing and depth of a financial crisis). [0] http://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/inflation-adjusted-oil-prices-chart/ http://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/inflation-adjusted-...