The 44-page document that was produced from the forum, and released last week to headlines that shouted '$8 a litre by 2018', gave equal weight to two opposing concepts—peak oil, and energy agency forecasts that current high oil prices are temporary.

Peak oil, the idea that the quantity of cost-effective oil available to global economies is peaking and will begin to decline, has long been regarded by mainstream oil scientists as an idea with little traction.

But Paul Graham, leader of CSIRO's Energy Futures project, said that a strong message to come out of the forum is that peak oil should be taken seriously.

"All around the world, government and industry at all levels are acknowledging that we can’t rule out this possibility any more; that it could happen sometime in the next decade," Mr Graham said.

The prospect of peak oil being a reality led to the paper’s headline statement, that if the world hit a near-term peak in oil production, "petrol prices could increase to between A$2 and as much as A$8 per litre by 2018".

At the same time, the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) and International Energy Agency (IEA) have produced forecasts that continue to peg the long-term price of oil at US$60-$70 a barrel—less than half the price it has traded at over the past few weeks.

Mr Graham said that the IEA has already said it will revise its price forecasts in November "to acknowledge the likelihood of depeletion being a problem", but the EIA forecast was only published in March.

"We need to acknowledge that there is an alternative view out there which says that some way or another, we'll find the oil we need," he said.

"It's frustrating. We don't know who's right, so we just have to acknowledge that the outlook is very uncertain."

That uncertainty extends to the alternatives to oil, which for more than a century has provided industry with unmatched bang for its buck.