Daniel Yergin — energy economist and author of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power — writes this sensible Washington Post op-ed in which he reminds us that the current relatively high prices of energy do not mean that the end of the oil age is right around the corner:

Prices around $60 a barrel, driven by high demand growth, are fueling the fear of imminent shortage — that the world is going to begin running out of oil in five or 10 years. This shortage, it is argued, will be amplified by the substantial and growing demand from two giants: China and India.
Yet this fear is not borne out by the fundamentals of supply. Our new, field-by-field analysis of production capacity, . . . is quite at odds with the current view and leads to a strikingly different conclusion: There will be a large, unprecedented buildup of oil supply in the next few years. Between 2004 and 2010, capacity to produce oil (not actual production) could grow by 16 million barrels a day — from 85 million barrels per day to 101 million barrels a day — a 20 percent increase. Such growth over the next few years would relieve the current pressure on supply and demand.

Read the entire op-ed, and then recall Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond’s observation during a Wall Street Journal interview earlier this year regarding Chevron’s bet of continued high energy prices that underlies the high price it is paying for Unocal:

WSJ: What do you think of ChevronTexaco’s decision to acquire Unocal?
Mr. Raymond: I can never remember an industry consolidating at high prices. But I can remember an industry consolidating at low prices.
WSJ: Some people think prices will keep going up.
Mr. Raymond: Maybe. I’ll bet they’ll be lower at some point.