no, oil imports from the Gulf wouldnt be that big of a deal

Submitted by mark (United States), Apr 20, 2008 at 00:54

Oh yeah, one other thing. A lack of Gulf Oil wouldn't be that big of a deal to the West (apart from our horrific grief over watching so many fellow humans blow themselves up!). Say oil prices go to $300-400 / barrel for five or at most ten years. The West would just mobilize itself around plug-in hybrids, coal gasification, solar development, shale oil development.

All of these things are easily technological feasible today at $115 and would become WILDLY profitable at $400. Thus, there would be a huge incentive to push them. Of course, we'd have a horrible recession, but we'd get through it fine and at the other end, we'd have a much more resilient fuel system.

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