WASHINGTON – The ball is in the court of the national oil companies: Petróleos de Mexicanos, Saudi Aramco, Petróleos de Venezuela, Russia's Gazprom and the like.

World demand for oil now stands at 86.1 million barrels a day. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects it to reach 97.3 million in seven years and 117.6 million barrels a day by 2030. That extra 31.5 million barrels of daily production is the equivalent of three Saudi Arabias.

Based on what's known about the world's petroleum reserves, nearly all of the increase will have to come from countries that have national oil company monopolies.

Conservation, alternative fuels and giant new oil and natural gas fields in areas where Exxon Mobil Corp. and other private companies can explore won't be enough to meet the rising demands of a growing global economy.

The Saudis are spending $50 billion to $70 billion to raise production by a third. That won't be enough.

Russia and Mexico, along with OPEC members such as Venezuela, Kuwait and Iran, will have to bring huge sums of their own to bear on increasing oil and gas production, or energy prices will soar well beyond their historic highs. That could mean pushing past $5 gasoline and $100-a-barrel oil.

This is the consensus among the world's oil-consuming nations, expressed by such forums as the Group of Eight, which held its summit this year in St. Petersburg, Russia; the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation nations; and the industrialized countries of the International Energy Agency.

One forecast looms above the rest in this worldview: China, today home to 9 million automobiles, will have 150 million by 2030.

China is expected to account for one-third of the increase in oil demand in the next two decades.

Meanwhile, two-thirds of the world's known oil and gas reserves are in countries that either limit access or close the reserves to foreign companies, said Karen Harbert, assistant U.S. secretary of energy for policy and international affairs.

And those countries are not stepping up to the task.

Russia won't be able to meet existing gas contracts to Europe without reversing the downward investment curve in exploration and production in its natural gas fields. Venezuela's oil production is off by half.

"Social spending is up 80 percent, [Venezuela's] energy investments are down 80 percent. That is not sustainable, and it's a cause for worry," Ms. Harbert said.

This is all part of a view held by energy experts such as Dan Yergin of consulting firm Cambridge Energy Research Associates that blames "above-ground" obstacles – politics, flagging investment, rising costs – for the muted response of oil and gas supplies to higher prices.

On one hand, the "peak oil" view of the world is that there's not enough crude left beneath the land and seas to meet rising demand, so a crash program of conservation and alternative fuels is needed.

But Mr. Yergin is confident the world has ample resources of oil and natural gas; this just is not a great time to go out and explore for them. In the last 30 months, the costs of oil and gas exploration have risen 64 percent, he said.

"The industry is reeling from sticker shock right now," Mr. Yergin said. "When costs go up that much, it limits the things you can do. I hear everywhere people talking [about] rising costs meaning delays or projects postponed."

Ms. Harbert, in a recent speech at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said energy security concerns are now so great that conservation, alternate energy and increased production from known reserves are all needed to meet future demand.

Of course, there's plenty of work to be done in conservation. We in the United States haven't increased the fuel efficiency of the national auto fleet since the mid-1980s. In nations such as China, rapid industrialization has led to widespread energy waste.

Much of the world is actually promoting energy inefficiency by spending $250 billion a year subsidizing consumption. The subsidies include discount gasoline in countries such as Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria. They total enough to pay for the energy investments that would be needed in those countries to meet rising demand, Ms. Harbert said.

But with prices going up, there's less pressure on producers to do anything to raise production.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has been pushing to "renationalize" oil properties.

Russia is elbowing foreign companies out.

Mexico seems politically paralyzed by the idea of amending its constitution to allow foreign companies to participate in oil and natural gas production.

And Kuwait has spent a decade debating whether to allow foreign companies to explore in the north, along the Iraqi border.

The United States, meanwhile, is doing everything it can to choke off energy investments in Iran to convince that country to drop its apparent pursuit of nuclear weapons.

If producing countries remain sluggish and sated by their huge incomes, consumers will eventually find the political will to act in ways that could one day marginalize such producers.

Once ethanol made from agricultural wastes is perfected, for example, gasoline's share of the energy market is going to decline in a hurry.