Oil prices will ratchet up to over $200 a barrel over the next five years, leading to a dramatic reorganization of the North American economy, a Canadian economic forecaster has said.

In a new report, chief economist Jeff Rubin of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, a major oil-company lender, said oil could hit $150 as soon as 2010.

“It is increasingly clear that the outlook for oil supply signals a period of unprecedented scarcity,” Rubin says in his new report.

The price surge and economic damage on the car industry area expected despite crude production which is seen growing by one million barrels a day in the same period.