The chart blue dots are the historical average barrel prices (in constant US$, 2009=100) of crude oil, while the red line provides the non-linear projection until 2050. The chart does not intend to be a prediction tool of future prices, but only a strong reminder that the upwards trend will drive oil prices to stratospheric values. Since kerosene and gas prices at the pump closely follow crude oil prices, it is foreseeable that a flight ticket or a car ride will become unaffordable for the common person in a not so far away future.

However hard it may be to tell what the barrel of crude oil will be worth after-tomorrow, it is an easy guess to foresee that it will move significantly up in the long run. The market price of oil is influenced by a complex set of interrelated factors, which render the final outcome of a small change upstream quite unexpected or outright counter intuitive. Take the 2008 "subprime" mortgage collapse – the average barrel price dipped from around $120 to below $60.

Volatility of crude prices is probably to be blamed on political and speculative actions that cause prices to unexpectedly go through the roof and suddenly crash on the floor, rather than to the economic and demographic fundamentals that drive the long-term trends.

Some demand factors are obvious and can be planned for, to a large extent:

• Economy growth drives demand for energy up. The surge of such emerging economies as China, India or Brazil is putting heavy pressure on the world supply of energy, of which crude oil is the dominant source.
• Population growth induces higher energy consumption through increases in housing, commercial floorspace, transportation, and goods and services.
• Transportation is especially avid for liquid fuels, for which there is no valid alternative as yet.
• Efficiency gains can partially slow demand down.

Other factors are less adept to planning:

• Discovery of new and exploitable oil, gas or other energy source deposits.
• Technology breakthroughs in the production and exploitation of alternative energy sources, e.g. solar, wind, tidal, biomass, photovoltaic.
• Technology advances in the exploitation of unconventional resources, including oil sands, extra heavy oil, bio fuels, coal-to-liquids, and gas-to liquids.
• Technology improvements allowing for the substitution of one source of energy – preferably renewable – to another.
• Political decisions and limits on economic access to resources, including use of quotas, fiscal regimes, and other restrictive regulations.
• Financial breakdowns, social unrest or warfare can disrupt production and supply chains (see list of events in table below).

The intricate interplay of all these factors do not allow for reliable forecasts. The US energy information administration (EIA), the source of data in this page, periodically reports on the energy situation using their own energy modeling system. In its 2011 energy outlook EIA presents a high oil price case that places the price of the barrel at $200 (2009=100) by 2035.

The issue with such econometric models is the underlying assumption that there are no limits. GDP can grow, housing can multiply, transportation can spread forever, and energy sources will pop up inextinguishable, from somewhere, be it a supposedly unlimited planet or the fathomless technological human genius, in order to quench the insatiable demand for energy.

But efficiency gains and energy source substitution will not suffice. We must plan for a radical change of our energy consuming habits or else, someday, our own dark and greedy persona will provoke a painful settling of scores.

Sources: EIA - Energy Information Administration

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