The oil barons, my bosses, can think whatever they want, but here’s something they cannot fight. Every well or oil field or petroleum province in a country depletes at ~5% per year, not counting new discoveries… and new discoveries have been very, very poor over the last five years.
It’s 28 years to 2050. So 0.95^28 = 0.24. So if we don’t find new oil, we’ll be down to 24% of what we pump today by 2050. I’m not saying that will happen, but for new oil to come online, the cost will have to go up. There’s always that marginal barrel of oil to find, if you want to pay for it. Murica don’t want to pay. Murica thinks cheap oil is a birthright.
It’s just like the 19th century… they hunted whales to the brink of extinction for whale oil lamps.