Timothy Noah thinks that all we need to return to the era of cheap fossil fuels is to pass a law clobbering OPEC for its price-fixing. He forgets on thing, however.

Nature is deciding the price of oil.

We have entered an era where supplies are straining to meet demand. Worldwide oil production peaked in May of last year. The three biggest oil fields, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Burgan in Kuwait and Cantarell in Mexico are all in decling production. With each passing day, OPEC has less and less power to determine the price of oil. The constraints of nature are now in the driver's seat.

Yesterday the IEA projected that world demand will increase to 95 million barrels of oil per day by 2012. But if production now struggles to yield 85 million barrels per day, something has got to give and that something is price, which may soon soar. By 2012, we may look back fondly at how cheap gas was in 2007.

Expansion of production facilities was deliberetly halted or slowed beginning in 1998/99 to create a shortage in world supply and drive the price up. Venezuela & Chavez was the leading Oil Hawk, followed by Iran, then Saddam Hussien and Iraq. Nations not cooperating were convinced to curt production too, as new strange 'militants' began to attack their oil fields & workers, and blow up new facilities...