Two years ago, Mississippi oil man Mike Blackwell returned to his hometown of Terre Haute and gave a lecture titled “$2-Plus-a-Gallon Gasoline: What’s Next?”

Blackwell humbly denied having any crystal-ball powers. After all, with countless forces — from politics to weather — affecting oil costs, predicting gasoline prices is like trying to predict when someone will die.

Nonetheless, Blackwell tapped his 35 years of experience and relayed prognostications he’d read or heard inside industry circles. On Feb. 24, 2006, Blackwell told the audience at Indiana State University, his alma mater, some speculators figured crude oil would soon hit $120 a barrel.

Last week, a bit later than Blackwell’s oil business source suggested, that happened.

Now that gasoline is nearly $4 per gallon, it seemed appropriate to revisit the subject with Blackwell and ask, “What’s next?”

“I have no earthly idea,” he said by telephone from Jackson, Miss., where Blackwell and his business partners run MOCO — the Mississippi Oil Co.

“I don’t see [the price of gasoline] going down precipitously,” he said. “If it falls below $3 [a gallon], I’ll be surprised.”

He’s seen trade projections of crude oil topping out at between $175 and $200 a barrel. Indeed, Goldman Sachs called for prices rising to the $150 to $200 range within two years. “That’s basically, $4- to $5-a-gallon gasoline,” Blackwell said.