1) America would be richer and more prosperous
2) OPEC would realize you cannot eat or drink oil . Of course oil will always be valuable
the only real wealth is cheap energy.
In all of human history human muscle did almost all the work. Every stone in the pyramids and buildings of the world was quarried, cut and lifted by men
only since the 1800's , did we have machines burning fuel to replace them.
the work that can be done in a whole day by human muscle can be done by electricity from burning oil. The cost to replace a days Work is is less than $0.50 a day. would you take that as a labor wage?
Energy. it is all about cheap energy, clean would be nice
Let assume that at this second.. I am announcing a new fuel that is cheap,10% the cost of today's gasoline. The one problem is it's not compatible with today's internal combustion engine.
What would we do this the nearly 254.4 million cars on the road today, how long would it take to develop the infrastructure to supply this new fuel to all the "gas" stations.
Even if it was developed, it would take many years befor OPEC would feel an appreciable change in demand.