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Oil production obviously cannot consume 100 percent of the world's income. My intuitive, uninformed guess is that it cannot go above 15 percent. If we see oil at $300 per barrel, we will be looking out over the smoldering ruins of the world's economy.

The raw numbers aren't deep, dark secrets. The oil production and oil prices are posted by the US Energy Information Agency. The EIA keeps two sets of books on oil production. I used the smaller one that includes conventional oil (and gas condensate) but does not include synthetic fuels. For the 2007 world economic output, almost identical numbers come from the International Monetary Fund and the CIA.

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(You can be 110% sure the CIA didn't first cop to the prospect of $300 oil in 2007.)