@cicerone imposter,
what happened when rice became percieved to be in short supply was that countries supplying rice with no notice passed laws than made it illegal to export rice, or placed rigid controls on export. Companies with valid contracts to supply rice did not supply rice because they would have been in violation of the law to do so, and because the government made it impossible to ship the rice.
Or look at what Russia did with energy, Russian firms had valid contract to supply energy to western Europe, and with little notice the Russian government shut down the transport of the energy.
The marketplace, private enterprise, operates only with the consent of the government. This consent can be withdrawn at any time, and historically is when government believes that it is in the national interest to do so. We know for a fact that until a new energy source is discovered (a new type of energy) that energy will increasingly become scarce. As it does so Governments will increasingly shut down or otherwise impose their will upon the marketplace. It is not always in a supplying countries interest to get the best price for what they have to sell, it is sometimes in their interest to keep what they have for themselves, or to keep it for their friends and allies.
Your argument that more will be produced thus this problem will not happen is idiotic. we know that there is a finite supply of crude in the ground, and we also know that any meaningfull increase in effort to extract crude takes years if not decades. The marketplace will not sell regulate to prevent scarcity.
