The Price of Oil in 2015

LONDON – In late 1979, I began work on my PhD thesis, an empirical investigation of the OPEC surplus and its disposal. It was the end of a decade in which oil prices had undergone two dramatic increases, and most of the various geniuses of the day were confidently predicting that they would continue to soar, from under $40 per barrel – a historic high at that time – to above $100. By the time I finished my research in 1982, the price of oil had begun what would become a 20-year plunge. It would not hit $100 per barrel until January 2008.