Energy crisis? Are we headed for a new countershock?

This article focuses on forecasts of crude oil prices and examines the impacts of petroleum resources, production costs including environmental costs, the position of oil producing groups of counties such as OPEC, world oil demand, and non-OPEC and OPEC production capacities on the price. The possibility of countershocks with downward consumption forecasts and production capacities overtaking demand is discussed, and the desirability of price relaxation leading to sustainable prices with growth rate of production capacity paralleling growth rate of demand is considered