Remember how gas got pretty cheap last year?
 

This Bloomberg News video claims by 2023 there will be enough EVs to cause a similar oil oversupply, which, reading between the lines, will start another downward trend of gasoline prices from which oil prices will never rebound, assuming no production reduction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwHN6QQWv2g

Chewy, according to the information I am seeing (subject to interpretation), dino-juice is close to its peak use in North America, and it appears to be heading downhill.

US-based oil detection and extraction methods have improved dramatically in the past decade, so domestic oil producers can now provide more oil at competitive prices. Foreign oil-rich nations, some devastated by war and civil unrest, are producing product in high volume to raise income for rebuilding (or the fund the war). Even the rich oil-producing nations (e.g., Saudi Arabia) are having a hard time curbing production.

This has given rise to a condition in which domestic stores are full, incoming tankers are anchored off-shore unable to land and offload their shipment because the receiving facilities are full, and oil producing countries are now routinely renting super-tankers as off-shore storage facilities for product they produce and cannot ship because the receivers' tanks on the other side of the ocean are already full, and they are super-tankers anchored there offshore, waiting to dump their loads.

There is a oil glut in effect. It is not easing. It's just a matter of time until pump prices decline again to reflect the glut.

FWIW, when I got my new Audi Q5 3.0 diesel in late May 2015, I tracked diesel and premium gas prices at every fill. Today, Feb 17/17, the price of both here are just 2 cents per liter lower than they were in late May 2015 (now: Diesel CAD$1.069/L, Premium CAD$1.179/L).

I miss the lows of May 2016. Mind you. I get respectable fuel economy, and diesel prices (here) have been below the price of regular since I got my car (it has been a little higher that regular but below mid-grade in the past couple of months). I'm saving in MPG, and in $/L -- double win for me.

I think last July I bought gas for $1.649 (US). Today my favorite station is at $1.929 and dropping although slowly. If there is no significant bump for the summer blend switch, we might see prices down to close to the same level. Of course it only takes one global crises to change that trajectory.

Personally I see the advancement of powertrain development including capacitive 80+% regenerative efficiencies as the additional "gorilla in the room" on top of electrification and potentially even more detrimental to sustained high energy prices,

In fact, when the predicted powertrain efficiencies reach the levels that were forecast in 2006, global transportation will evolve into vehicles with remarkable efficiencies even compared to current vehicles, regardless of their primary energy storage medium.

Gary, can you speak more about what I don't know?

Keep in mind that humanity didn't leave "The Stone Age" behind because we ran out of rocks. We found we could make better tools from iron.

Similarly, there will be plenty of oil in the ground when we figure out affordable, reliable, clean, and renewable energy sources. And I'm not talking "Fukushima Clean".

HyDrid - Hydraulic Hybrid

The tip of the iceberg.

Sounds like you're talking about the Kardashev Scale, which I learned about from a Michio Kaku presentation.

From Wiki...

The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy a civilization is able to use for communication. The scale has three designated categories:

A Type I civilization – also called planetary civilization – can use and store energy which reaches its planet from the neighboring star.

A Type II civilization can harness the total energy of its planet's parent star (the most popular hypothetical concept being the Dyson sphere—a device which would encompass the entire star and transfer its energy to the planet(s)).

A Type III civilization can control energy on the scale of its entire host galaxy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale