Uh-oh.

From The Oil Drum:

An important Dutch energy institute, the Clingendael International Energy Program (CIEP), recently published a report that confirms most of the conclusions about the oil market reached over the years at the oildrum. That the floor price of oil is now 110 dollars per barrel, that supply will not rise beyond 100-105 million b/d in the coming decades, that there will be an oil supply constraint for most of the next decade, that there are insufficient quantities of alternative fuels available and that thus demand destruction is inevitable. CIEP is especially important because it is endorsed by amongst others BP, Shell Netherlands, Total E&P Netherlands, three Dutch Ministries, Wintershall, Vopak Oil Europe Middle East and several Dutch energy companies.

If you still haven't seen T. Boone Pickens' short video proposing a national effort to reduce imported oil, you owe it to yourself to watch it now. Here is the four-minute version.

I am highly, repeat highly, suspicious of anything T. Boone Pickens has his hands in. T. Boone is not interested in my welfare, he's interested in his own welfare, and his own only. But I will give him credit - he is moving the discussion past the irrelevant (except to oil companies) question of whether we should drill off-shore, and looking at the big picture.

This morning on the Marketplace public radio program, a "scholar" from the Cato Institute attacked the Pickens plan and defended sending $700 billion a year overseas for oil. This is what the market demands, and the market is God. If the Cato Institute is against Pickens, that's a good indication that there's something good there.

But healthy skepticism is still warranted.