It’ll be nice for oil workers to get those letters, won’t it? But while you’re all holding your breath waiting on them to arrive in the mail, you can pass the time thinking about this: forecasts that prices have “no where to go but up” are no more likely to be true in the oil markets than they were in the housing markets.

It was in a good time of rising prices that many financial sector companies planted the seeds of their own ruin (or at least their shareholders’ ruin). Undoubtedly, some oil and gas companies have fallen into the same trap during the last several years of high prices. It is a natural (if naïve) human tendency to believe that tomorrow will look a lot like today, and to make plans around that belief – sometimes highly leveraged plans.

But as we’ve seen recently in the financial markets, the capacity of experts to predict the future leaves a bit to be desired. This fundamental truth of life applies to crude prices, peak oil, climatology, and politics as much as it applies to housing prices, credit markets, and stock portfolios.

The energy industry, more than most, has been typified by cycles of boom and bust in its history. Despite all the hype, there’s no real reason to believe that this has ended. Predictions of $200/barrel oil suddenly seem a bit off. How wisely the various entities in the industry have invested their gains from this last cycle of boom will determine who survives the next bust.

Those who took a long-term view and invested their windfalls wisely should be okay. Those who decided to go nuts and bet the farm on high prices lasting forever will do less well. (Attention, Hugo Chávez: your popularity ratings may soon follow your production capacity.)

And the domestic energy industry can’t count on a huge government bailout if it bungles the next turn in the economic cycle. Not only has the industry been portrayed as a cartoon villain for years; a collapse in energy prices won’t have the same power to hold the economy captive that a collapse in finance does. People like low energy prices.

For energy companies, it may seem as if the business cycle is a no-win situation. But as current events show, it’s always better to be resented for your success than your failure.