Oil Prices: Stable or Falling? Plus Obama's Crony Energy Game

What will happen to oil prices over the next several years?

Kevin McElroy thinks oil prices may drop by 50% over the next few years.

The IEA expects oil prices to fall over the next 5 years as demand slumps and supplies grow

Andrew McKillop sees Brent prices dropping by 25% and WTI dropping by around 15%

Citi sees oil prices between $80 and $90 through 2020

No one actually knows where oil prices will be in 5 or 10 years. But as long as prices stay near or above $80, upstream producers will be making money.

Despite ongoing sanctions on Iran and continuing speculations of war in the Persian Gulf, oil prices have resisted the urge to spike. This price stability reflects increased supply from other sources, and must be a tremendous source of disappointment to oil traders and peak oilers alike.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama continues his policy agenda of energy starvation, continuing to support intermittent unreliable forms of energy, rather than more reliable and dependable forms. But he has a good reason for his approach -- Chicago style political quid pro quo!

Some 80% of companies receiving Department of Energy backing, according to the Hoover Institution's Peter Schweizer, are "run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers." One, Mr. Al Gore, is worth an estimated $100 million, thanks to $2.5 billion in federal loans, grants and tax breaks, according to Friday's Washington Post.

What about the "green" jobs that were supposed to sprout? By Mr. Obama's own arithmetic, the $21 billion spent so far should have delivered 700,000 jobs. Actual count: 28,854, according to Friday's Bloomberg Businessweek. _WSJ

Obama is doubling down on stupid by pushing a trade war with China over solar panels!

As has been stated here before, when it comes to producing and installing green intermittent unreliables, whoever wins is the one who loses.

Advanced next-gens nuclear energy will be the future of large scale energy for at least a few thousand years, once the leadership of advanced nations wakes up to the obvious. That should take about 10 to 20 years.

In the meantime, we are going to need both conventional and unconvention oil & gas, as well as coal, kerogens, bitumens, gas hydrates, and advanced biomass and microbial fuels.

What we absolutely do not need to do is to waste resources on destructive green intermittent unreliables.