The down move in oil consumption may rival the early 80s. That will pressure OPEC for quite a while especially as just like in the late 70s/early 80s there are a bunch of upstream projects in the pipeline that will deliver crude regardless of price. The investment is sunk and variable costs are no where near $50/bbl.
Dave O'Reilly of Chevron claimed they will increase production by 5% in 2009. If he's not full of it, that means they'll overcome declines for the first time in yonks.
