Pickens: $300 Oil is Still On Its Way

(MoneyWatch)  T. Boone Pickens, the Texas billionaire investor turned-wind turbine and natural gas champion, said Thursday he expects the price of oil will hit $100 in 2010. Within 10 years, he thinks crude will make it to $300 a barrel.

Pickens, who was attending a conference in Washington, said the world had maxed out at 85 million barrels a day of production, reported Bloomberg News.

Pickens isn't alone in his prognostication.

Morgan Downey of Scarce Whales, noted quite a few December 2015 New York Mercantile Exchange West Texas Intermediate crude oil $500 strike call options have been purchased since the beginning of October this year. He has a handy chart, to boot.

And Pickens has said it before.

Pickens threw out similar figures last summer when oil had surpassed the $140 per barrel level. During testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in July 2008, Pickens said prices would reach $300 in 10 years if the U.S. did not reduce its dependence on foreign imports.

In the months since his testimony, prices dropped as low as $32 a barrel and then rose back up to over $75 a barrel.

But now, after logging a little global-recession time, which included a slackening demand for fuel, Pickens is still throwing out the $300 number. Meaning, weak demand or not, Pickens believes world oil production has peaked.

And demand is expected to pick up. The International Energy Agency's 2009 World Energy Outlook expects demand to resume an upward trend and increase 40 percent higher than 2007 levels by 2030.

The Paris-based agency said conventional oil production in countries not belonging to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries -- OPEC -- will peak in 2010. So, most output is going to have to come from OPEC countries, placing even more pressure on that supply.