Oil Prices As Little As 4 Years From Collapse Amid Historic Shift In Transport: Report
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/05/16/oil-prices-historic-shift-transportation-stanford-tony-seba_n_16641540.html?utm_hp_ref=canada
The actual report:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bbf9b/t/591a2e4be6f2e1c13df930c5/1494888038959/RethinkX+Report_051517.pdf
If oil drops to $25/ bbl, and holds, the high price sources will dry up, and renewables will have a new, much lower bar to dip beneath to remain competitive.
I'm not sure how much lower piped natural gas can go, nor am I convinced that LNG can ever compete without huge subsidies, or perhaps sanctions that skew the markets.
Island nations, those without their own gas resources, or access to undersea pipelines may, in the long term, be priced out of any hope of success as an exporting manufacturer.
Burning fossil fuels other than natural gas is far too dirty to be allowed in the long term, but coal rich nations will be hard pressed to "leave it in the ground". Once electric vehicles clean up the transport sector, and burning coal has been shunned for heating and generating electricity, will burning oil for heating & generation be the next to fall?
I can see oil based chemical production, coal and coke for steel production, with natural gas fulfilling it's role as the last ff that is being burned on an industrial scale. It's far from a perfect future, but perhaps the best that we can realistically hope for.
How the world's nations cope economically under such conditions is still unknowable. If any form of BAU, no matter how "green" survives I'll be pleasantly surprised.
Terry