ABSTRACT
The financial crisis that engulfed the world at the close of 2008 has had dramatic implications for world oil and other energy supplies. For one, it has pushed oil prices to below US$50 a barrel from a record high of about US$150 per barrel. All of this took place within a matter of weeks. If the low price regime holds, it will have substantial implications for the urgent search for alternative and renewable energy. A clear tendency will be for crude oil suppliers to pump more oil in order to shore up the flow of their revenue. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) may seek to control the volume of oil in the market for similar reasons and hope that such curtailment would jack up prices. Will the oil corporations be uninterested bystanders in all this? Unlikely.
