Growing up in Houston, Ive seen the boom bust cycle that seems to have been a part of the oil business since Rockefeller was running Standard Oil. Just because

Growing up in Houston, Ive seen the boom bust cycle that seems to have been a part of the oil business since Rockefeller was running Standard Oil. Just because oil is cheap right now doesn't mean that people are going to stop working on clean energy and a replacement for petroleum based transportation. It may slow things negligibly but people who are smart enough to be looking into that aren't really swayed by the price of a barrel of oil. The Saudis are trying to sweat out the more expensive production methods,(tar sands, bitumen, shale) as part of a long term play to get the price of a barrel of oil to where they want it ~80-100/bbl. I don't think they anticipated that US and other producers would just make up for the lost revenue by producing more(again, something that goes back to the beginnings of the oil business). The government is at risk of making themselves insolvent in the next 5 years or so if they continue this policy[1] and Im not really sure why they(or any producer) are making such short sighted decisions. Its not going to get better until the reduce the supply side glut[2]. Most producers are reactionary to this type of volatility and cancel well completions which take many months to bring online. Once we have reduced the over supply look for another swing as consumption overtakes available of supply until new wells can be brought back up to speed. From the information I have being in the business, that will take about 2-3 years or more, which may cause some pretty catastrophic financial crashes as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and other producers run out of money, which is already happening.[3] keeping oil in the 50-100 dollar range is probably best for the world economy, but keeping everyone honest enough to produce the amount needed to get oil prices there is the problem. IMO, the blip in SUV sales isn't going to significantly impact the environment. Even SUVs are getting 20mpg hwy in real world driving now. This is easily 25-50% better than the last time oil was cheap 10-15 years ago. Government standards are still mandating better CAFE scores, and everyone will be producing electric cars in the next 5-10 years. Some of the supply glut could be blamed on the fact that most cars are more efficient now and are using less oil. [1]https://www.rt.com/business/319465-saudi-bankrupt-projection-imf/ https://www.rt.com/business/319465-saudi-bankrupt-projection... [2]https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=W_EPC0_SAX_YCUOK_MBBL&f=W https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=W... [3]http://www.businessinsider.com/nigeria-is-running-out-of-gas-2015-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/nigeria-is-running-out-of-gas...