Lemme stir the pot a little bit.

Gas prices here went up by almost 14% recently and all of it goes to the oil industry. That's not a huge hit, considering they are still lower than they were anly a year or so ago. From what I've read, the increase in oil prices follows an agreement between western and middle eastern producers to cut down on production in order to stimulate the price of oil. The rapprochement between the US and Iran may have had a something to do with this agreement. The price of oil which, based on the West Texas crude benchmark, was about US$11 per barrel was too low to justify any new major projects in the North American oil industry. The increase in oil prices will allow these projects to go ahead and stimulate the economies of the oil-producing regions of Canada and the US.

As I understand it, we are far from running out of oil. Conventional oil production technonogy can only recover about 15% of oil reserves and, if I have the correct numbers, enhanced technologies only raise the recovery rate to 20% or 25%. What we need to work on is to continue reducing the harmful emissions of burning fossil fuels. Increased oil prices, which justify continuing development of oil industry technology, will also justify the continuing development of emission control technology.

Bob