Ok - so that is my intrepretation. Here is an item from the Sunday New York Times

“Greenspan said Friday that the long term outlook for global oil supplies is reassuring even though anxiety about dwindling reserves has helped push spot prices to nearly $55 a barrel.”

Greenspan is reassured by his faith in markets. And, reading a bit deeper, reassured in a sort of ‘well the earth will fall into the sun in a billion years anyway so what does it matter” kind of way. According to the times, Greenspan said “market forces would lead to both increased oil production, greater energy efficency, and faster development of alternative sources of power.” I would tend to agree, that this has to happen in the long run, but given a presidential administration that is more or less the oil industry, and a consumer body that has been conditioned to only buy one thing, “more”, it seems that “market forces will not be left to operate cleanly or without opposition. These forces of denial will simply increase the pain as they struggle against the natural flow of the market.

More telling is his concern regarding the rise in future contract prices for delivery ten or so years out. These prices, having held steady at around $20 a barrel for the past ten years, have now climbed to around $35 a barrel. This reflects the industry’s belief that oil will continue to be increasingly hard to get. This syncs with the fact that new refineries are not being built - the industry cannot see it’s way clear to paying off that large of an investment. This is not a dire prediction coming from eco-freaks, but the a decision reflecting a lot of information and thought by people with a lot of dollars on the table.