World oil production will thereafter continue to decline at a dwindling rate. Governments will have the highest priorities for transportation fuels during an emergency. But this time the oil shortage will be permanent. Thus the question is not whether but when the foreseeable permanent oil crunch will occur. This next paralyzing and permanent oil shock will not be solved by any redistribution patterns or by economic cleverness, because it will be a consequence of pending and inexorable depletion of the world's conventional crude oil supply.
Few economists can bring themselves to accept that the global oil supply is geologically finite.
After the associated economic implosion, many of the world's developed societies may look like today's Russia. The United States may be competing with China for every tanker of oil, with the Persian Gulf oil exporters preferring Chinese rockets to American paper dollars for their oil. The economic and social ramifications of the coming oil shock will require serious planning worldwide. The global oil shortage we now can foresee will differ from the 1973 and 1979 oil-price surges, which were the result of political moves by the exporting countries. Unfortunately, their discovery rate was much lower than earlier, and few giant fields were found.