Bloomberg's William Pesek Jr. theorizes crude oil at $200 a barrel. In China, Marc Faber is quoted in the article as saying:

"we have a per capita consumption of oil of 1.7 barrels. In America it's 28 barrels, in South Korea 17 barrels, Japan 17 barrels, in India 0.7 barrels. In Vietnam it's probably also less than one barrel. So in Asia on the population of 3.6 billion people we consume less oil than the U.S. on a population of 295 million."

Being that China is in the early stages of industrialization, it's not hard to imagine further income growth and thus more demand for crude in the years ahead. Although, in my mind, crude's immutable laws of inelasticity should crack well before the $200 mark.

--Uday Karmarkar