Well, it appears as if the oil energy crisis is not going to go down in history without a fight from some people in order to change things. Rather than changing towards renewable energy sources or at the very least away from diminishing resources to ones that are still available in plenty (i.e. uranium and nuclear power), it appears as if the governments of the developed world (and in particular the government of the United States), is going to hitch the near future to the goal of bringing oil prices down.

According to many analysts of the oil futures market, there is a huge amount of speculation in oil prices that is accounting for more than half of the current price of oil. Specifically, the number I hear thrown around a lot is 60%.

Well, for the sake of argument let’s assume that the price of oil is $140 a barrel (at the time of writing the NYMEX future was $135.77). Taking away 60% of that price would leave oil at $56 a barrel, a price that is still extremely expensive when compared with prices in the early part of this decade that were below $40 a barrel. While $56 is still extremely good compared to the prices of today, it is important to realize that the price of oil is still rising even according to the most optimistic forecasts and that doing things like telecommuting is still going to be necessary in the future.