1. The world produces and consumes about 80 million barrels of oil a day.  It currently has spare production capacity of between three and five million barrels a day.
2. Under the weight of spectacular additions to the supply of natural gas due among other factors to breakthroughs in production techniques, the price of natural gas has cratered even as the price of oil has risen.  When oil spiked to $147 in June 2008, natural gas was over $13 per dekatherm.  Today, at around $105 oil, has is under $4 per dekatherm. Gas now holds more than a three to one price advantage over oil, which could lead to a massive shift to gas by large industrial and commercial users, with a concomitant decline in demand for oil.  Any further increase in oil prices may then accelerate this trend, as well as prompting increased investment in energy efficiency.
3. The U.S. is one-half as energy intensive as it was thirty years ago.  That is, the amount of energy it takes to produce one dollar of GDP has fallen by 50%.  This is partially because the American economy is so much more service and information driven than it was thirty years ago, and these sectors consume much less energy than does manufacturing. 

4. The average miles-per-gallon obtained by U.S. automobiles has risen 40% since 1980, from 16 to 22.6.

5. A 2007 study by the National Petroleum Council, conducted at the request of the Department of Energy, found that approximately 61% of energy produced is lost due to factors such as poor insulation, gas-guzzling vehicles and sub-optimal power plants.  Moreover, currently only one out of three barrels in an oil reservoir is recovered on average.  This translates into overall efficiency of only 13% for oil that is converted to a usable form.  There are therefore enormous potential efficiencies to be realized, both in production and consumption. 

6. At $105 per barrel, oil costs just a little bit less in real terms (that is, it takes just a little bit less of the consumer's earnings) than it did at the last peak in 1980.
7. The first law of the commodity cycle is this: supply responds directly to price while demand responds inversely to it.  The cure for high prices, as has been said in the commodity pits for a hundred years, is high prices.  

(Note: Many of the statistics in this piece come from Nansen Saleri's Wall Street Journal op-ed "Our Man-Made Energy Crisis," which appeared on March 9, and from Jeremy Siegel's March 1 commentary "Crude Realities."  Thanks to Nick Murray.)