In 1970 a barrel of crude oil averaged about $13 a barrel. Adjusted for inflation, that same barrel of oil should cost about $78 today. Instead, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil for April delivery traded at just under $50 a barrel in the noon hour on Friday. With crude prices at multidecade lows, Saudi Arabia pushed its OPEC partners into adopting a policy of no production cuts and letting the market decide the winner. What Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi understands — and what many other oil industry experts fail to understand — is summed up in a question he asked at an OPEC conference in December 2014. In a paper by energy economist Philip Verleger, Naimi is quoted: [I]s there a black swan the we don’t know about which will come by 2050 and we will have no demand [for oil]?