I am more of a conspiracy believer, and I think that oil prices are in a straight and tight relation with politics. No one can tell how high it can go, but I can tell you this. If the oil price goes so high that businesses start choking, then we will not see our economy recovered for a long-long while. If this happens, the dollar will be subjected to an accelerated hyper inflation. It looks like the politicians understand it well enough to keep the prices under control so far. So, the price of oil will subside. Moreover, the notion of world running out of oil is a complete nonsense created to spread scare and panic to accelerate price hike and score political points. By the time the world runs out of oil, it will no longer matter, for so many better sources of energy will be discovered.