Your comment: .... "The long term price is more dependent on the marginal cost of production".
That really raises a whole lot of issues that don't seem to get much air time on this thread.
For the approx 75% of world oil production that is produced by state owned oil companies there are also other issues to deal with.
For the remaining approx 25% of production that the independent oil companies produce, the cost of production usually is breathing down their collective necks all the time (especially for approving new projects).
I wonder with sovereignty issues and state energy security whether a lot of the larger oil independents will gravitate to being production contractors and earn their $$$ as pure service providers.
