We'd probably see rampant inflation. Oil is used to make lots of everyday items. Hopefully Gazprom was just engaged in wishful thinking.

Predictions are cheap.

I'm pretty sure within the next decade US will see go through a really bad period of economic depression that will be worse than anything since the Great Depression, although not quite as bad as then. Although most of it will have to do with the dollar crashing moreso than the absolute rise of oil prices, internationally speaking.

The best point has been made by Archie. Look around your room, and count how many things weren't made with oil, directly or indirectly.



Why just the US?

most of it will have to do with the dollar crashing

Predictions are cheap, that's right. Put your money where your mouth is and buy oil futures (and EUR futures, for those who think that the dollar will crash and burn).

That would be what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy. You predict higher prices, so you tell everyone to buy oil futures, thereby driving the price of oil up.

That's largely why prices are where they are right now. It has less to do with supply than it does speculation.

Oil production has begun falling at all of the major Western oil companies, and they are finding it harder than ever to find new prospects even though they are awash in profits and eager to expand.

Part of the reason is political. From the Caspian Sea to South America, Western oil companies are being squeezed out of resource-rich provinces. They are being forced to renegotiate contracts on less-favorable terms and are fighting losing battles with assertive state-owned oil companies.

....

As late as the 1970s, Western corporations controlled well over half of the world’s oil production. These companies — Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Total of France and Eni of Italy — now produce just 13 percent.

Today’s 10 largest holders of petroleum reserves are state-owned companies, like Russia’s Gazprom and Iran’s national oil company.

Sluggish supplies have prompted a cottage industry of doomsday predictions that the world’s oil production has reached a peak. But many energy experts say these “peak oil” theories are misplaced. They say the world is not running out of oil — rather, the companies that know the most about how to produce oil are running out of places to drill.

“There is still a lot of oil to develop out there, which is why we don’t call this geological peak oil, especially in places like Venezuela, Russia, Iran and Iraq,” said Arjun Murti, an energy analyst at Goldman Sachs. “What we have now is geopolitical peak oil.”

Western companies are far better than most national oil companies at finding and extracting petroleum, experts say. They have developed advanced exploration technologies and can muster significant financing to develop new fields. Many of the world’s exporting states, however, have spurned their expertise.

There are huge amounts of unconventional oil as well, such as Alberta's oil sands, second onto to Saudi Arabia in reserves quantity.

The U.S. has the largest deposits of oil shale in the world in the Rocky Mountains - more than all the other nations put together and a lot more than all the conventional oil reserves around the world.

A 2005 estimate set the total world resources of oil shale at 411 gigatons — enough to yield 2.8 to 3.3 trillion barrels (520 km3) of shale oil.[2][3][4][5] This exceeds the world's proven conventional oil reserves, estimated at 1.317 trillion barrels (209.4×109 m3), as of 1 January 2007.[22] The largest deposits in the world occur in the United States in the Green River basin, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming; about 70% of this resource is located on federally owned or managed land.[23] Deposits in the United States constitute 62% of world resources; together, the United States, Russia and Brazil account for 86% of the world's resources in terms of shale oil content.[20] These figures are considered tentative, as several deposits have not yet been explored or analyzed.[6][2] Professor Alan R. Carroll of University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates that Upper Permian lacustrine oil shale deposits of northwest China, absent from previous global oil shale assessments, are comparable to the Green River Formation.[24]