Rallying to the bullish banner in recent days have been executives of two energy giants. First, Paal Kibsgaard, CEO of oil-services leader Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB), said oil enjoys “very strong support” at this level in his quarterly conference call. (See The Energy Letter for more color from that event.)

Then, speaking yesterday at an industry conference in Abu Dhabi, Total’s (NYSE: TOT) top man in the Middle East, E&P Vice president Xavier Preel, said “roughly” $100 a barrel will be needed to justify future investments in unconventional production from tight oil formations and to sustain producer governments. Many such governments, especially in the Middle East but also in South America and Africa, need high oil prices to continue the social spending staving off calls for democracy from their young and restless populations, he didn’t have to add.

The leading spokesman for the bearish case throughout the recent price slump has been Edward Morse, chief of global commodities research at Citigroup, who continues to see $90/bbl Brent as the maximum over the next five years, arguing that higher prices will choke off growth in demand.

The first thing to note is how little divides the energy bulls and bears these days. The ten bucks separating Kibsgaard’s floor from Morse’s ceiling is a distinction without much of a difference to most global consumers, even the poorer ones who continue to drive incremental demand for energy. For the typical Chinese car buyer today’s $100 crude is more affordable than $90 oil was three years ago, given the gains in income. For the typical Saudi and Venezuelan, cheap gasoline is one of the few givens, buying political loyalty.

Yet crude has been pressured in recent weeks by evidence of a slowdown in demand growth from China and India, with China’s oil consumption last month dropping to the lowest levels since October.

This is likely more a reprieve than a lasting change, not least because the Chinese are increasingly opting for larger cars, with SUV sales up nearly 50 percent year-over-year in March even as fuel demand slackened.

The US Energy Information Administration is still expecting enough demand growth this year in the developing world to offset nearly the entire increase in global oil supply, with Saudi Arabia absorbing a modest cut as US producers ramp up output.

Yet the bigger long-term threat to oil prices is a glut of restored production from Iraq and, as laid out above, from Iran and Venezuela down the road. Already an Iraqi minister has threatened this week to leave OPEC should the cartel fail to raise his country’s quota to 5 million barrels per day (bpd). Iraq is now exporting roughly half that volume, but production is likely to rise as Western firms develop recently awarded concessions.

Preel may be right that double-digit crude won’t be enough to drive shale investments. But it will take significantly lower prices to derail Iraq’s aggressive growth plans, and to dissuade black sheep like Venezuela nd Iran from selling more as soon as they are able.