It implies the price doubled, not much more than that in very general terms.
If you mean what does it imply in terms of increased demand? That depends on the current price elasticity for oil. The problem is that price elasticity is something that changes over time (Its not totally random, it has some general trends (for example oil is typically inelastic, and in the short run is just about always highly inelastic), something that changes at different prices (even at a given time for a given good the elasticity will be different at different prices, increase the price by 2X and you may get more or less than double the decrease in demand and/or different increase in supply, than if you increase the price by 1X), something thats hard to measure thoroughly and with great precision (for example we can't measure elasticity at prices that don't actually occur, we can only guess at it), and something that can only be calculated (to the extent it can be calculated at all) after the fact (although you can use data from calculations from previous times to give you a fairly decent idea in many cases).
But just because we can't know certainly, or with precession, doesn't mean we can't have an idea. The general idea, which is fairly well supported by historical data, is that in the short run oil is highly inelastic. A relatively small increase in demand (less than 25%, maybe less than 10%, possibly even much less), could cause prices to double (or cause politicians to limit price increases, and thus result in shortages).
In the longer run new supply can come online, but at times where there isn't a lot of reserve supply that can take years. Also in the longer run people start finding ways to use less oil (or more directly less refined products, particularly gasoline), but some of the adjustments (like trading in your Humvee for a Prius, or moving closer to where you work), require a big change in price, or a lot of time, or both, before they happen to any great extent. |
