This would be the time to buying. I remember when it was 100+ dollars people were saying it will never go less than 100. Then when it was at 40 it will never go to a 100. Then it went to 100 in 2014. It's like people just don't look at history.
When I was attending Colorado School of Mines (~1999) conventional wisdom held that the maximum price should hover around $80 a barrel, since alternatives for industrial applications start becoming competitive beyond that point.
Keep in mind that oil can degrade while in storage, and degrade the storage itself. Taxation complicates the picture for commercial interests.
All things considered, the world probably has more above ground storage than it needs, and what exists is already full. From the perspective of at least one major oil company that I know of, this was already the case a decade ago.
Go Orediggers! Mines '00 here, I was across the street in Brown Building though (CivEng).
During the last round of oil shocks ('07-'08) I remember a lot being made about the inelasticity of demand for oil, and how that made prices so volatile. I'm sure that it's still very inelastic, but now that there are non-petroleum transportation alternatives (mass-produced EVs) I'm curious to see what future oil shocks will look like, and whether we'll reduce some of that storage as price volatility goes away.
Over 10 years people can buy less gas cars and more electric cars. But over a month, the car in your garage is either gas or electric. Not that many individual things that can do both. Maybe some power plants, where say neither coal nor oil generators are at 100% capacity...
