For a modest wager, oh, let’s say a couple of million quid for one of the world’s top oil men, Browne can triple his money by accepting the terms offered by another of the world’s top oil men, T. Boone Pickens.

In what is one of the more remarkable bouts of future price tipping that The Slug has seen, Browne came out last week and forecast that the oil price would drop to around $US40 a barrel.

In fact, his exact words were: “It is very likely that, in the medium term, prices will stand at about $US40 on average.”

Browne went on to say: “In the very long run, even $US25 to $US30 are possible.”

T. Boone (the T stands for Thomas – but where do the yanks get these names?) was not impressed. The Texan founder of Mesa Petroleum questioned whether Browne was being just a bit overly optimistic.

Speaking at an oil conference in Irving, Texas, T. Boone said the oil price was more likely to climb to $80/bbl by the end of the year – and that he was prepared to give odds of 3-to-1 that we will “never see $US50 a barrel oil again”.

Slugcatcher, like everyone else in the oil game, was fascinated by the tipping competition between two doyens of the oil patch. After all, this really is a case of one being right, and other wrong – with an element of gambling tossed in to spice it up a bit.

In terms of where the tipsters go now, the ball is in Browne’s court. He has a golden opportunity to call his old mate, and say something like: “T. Boone, I’ll take your 3-to-1” and then whack a wad on the table – an event that The Slug reckons is extremely unlikely to happen.

However, for the rest of us mere mortals, the game of oil price tipping is becoming rather interesting, more so since the boys sitting at the top table appear to be in such disagreement.

Browne’s view of the world, that of a pessimist, appears to have some validity – but so too does the view of T. Boone.

The world, according to Browne, is heading into a cyclical slowdown as rising interest rates and rising energy costs slow economic growth, just as we make more oil discoveries.

Browne believes that while prices will not fall sharply in the short term, there is a real chance of future major discoveries because “large oil fields are still being found” and regions such as West Africa have more oil to be tapped.

On top of that, there are unconventional oil sources such as Canadian oil sands.

T. Boone’s view of the world is that the industry simply cannot produce any more than it is today, around 85 million bbl a day.

“If production doesn’t increase, you’re going to keep seeing the price rise until we kill demand,” T. Boone said.

“We’ve produced about 1 trillion barrels of oil since 1900. I think there is 1 trillion left of recoverable oil. Some say there is much more than that. That’s true but only if you count oil shale and other unconventional, hard to reach formations. The price is going to get so high that you can produce that unconventional oil.”

At worst, we have one man’s view of the future oil world set against another man’s view. At best, we have price tips from two men who know a lot more than most.

And in the middle we have Slugcatcher saying “who cares”, just so long as Browne makes that call and asks T. Boone for a slice of those 3-to-1 odds.