If you are an oil producer, you may not have a problem for some time.
However, if you are an oil importer (US, Japan, etc.) you have a very big problem. In order for you to be able to buy oil, there must be someone willing to sell it. The time an oil producer has "extra" oil to sell on the world market is surprisingly short... typically a few decades at most. Once oil exports start to decline, they generally go to zero exports in about a decade.
The UK exported a million barrels per day; exports fell to zero within 10 years.
Indonesia exported a million barrels per day; exports fell to zero within 10 years.
Mexico exported 2 million barrels per day; exports to fall to zero within 10 years (falls to zero around 2011).
This is even worse than it sounds because their exports do not just fall to zero; they become net importers.
Five exporting countries now account for half of the oil on the world market. They are Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, Iran, and United Arab Emirates. For all of them, their exports are expected to drop to near zero in 10 to 20 years.
I think this implies, even without a collapse of the dollar, at least $300 a barrel oil, with gasoline well above $10 a gallon, and a totally paralyzed economy.
That will trump any kind of financial instability annoying us now. The rich countries of the world will have to drastically cut energy consumption, and their GDPs will shrink accordingly. Unfortunately, we will have triple the population we had a century ago, so this will be highly asymmetrical.
It is worthwhile reviewing these graphs carefully, particularly Fig. 1 and Figs. 11 on.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/38948
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