I am in no way smart enough to know what oil prices are going but I would caution against recency bias on oil prices as it seems like some really serious things are happening in the oil biz that could mark a discontinuity in how that industry works.
I read yesterday that shale oil and gas reserves in the US are now estimated at the equivalent of 2000 BILLION barrels. The US currently consumes 12 Billion barrels per year. So the reserves are the current equivalent of the U.S. able to care for itself for 166 years...and energy consumption in the states is now growing only about 1% per year as the economy becomes much more energy efficient. The U.S. is now the largest exporter of hydrocarbons in the world and sudden availability of cheap energy is starting to overwhelm the cost of labor in calculations of where to put large manufacturing, etc. European companies are looking to build large, energy intensive manufacturing in the states due to its availability of cheap energy. Petro-states worldwide are licking their wounds and looking panic'd. We're talking about some of the world's worst countries becoming insolvent. OPECs decision not to cut production volumes was an attempt to tactically drive the oil price down to shut off some shale wells.
I'll bet on the productivity and innovation genius of western shale and oil sands people over the govt run, fat oil oligopoly any day. Combine innovation with political stability and energy could become a very regional business again with North America being pretty self-sufficient and the rest of the world (China, India, Japan...) dealing with the Middle East.
Imagine what happens if Europe loosens its views on oil and gas extraction -- an not unlikely outcome as Russia continues to threaten cutting off gas to Eastern Europe.
Regardless, huge things are afoot here both for oil and society including possibly a global move from "impending energy scarcity" to "energy abundance." Oil price volatility is likely guaranteed, but who knows which way it will go and when?
Time to curl up for a nap with my boring index funds