Mumbai, May 14 (IANS): Crude oil prices may soon rise to $100 a barrel due to increasing costs of exploration and production, and businesses should be prepared for higher energy prices than what they were used to in the last 20 years, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said Friday.

In Asia, crude oil prices have fallen below $74 for a barrel as the European debt crisis spread fears of a slowing economic recovery and subsequent lower demand for oil.

"Experts talk of resilient oil growth, sluggish refining growth and higher marginal costs for new discoveries and production. All these factors are no doubt true, but I believe that the petrochemical industry will have to keep reinventing itself in response and prepare itself for a higher energy price than what it has been used to in the last two decades," Ambani said, addressing the 10th Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference here.

"$80-$100 is a norm in this ever changing global dynamics and we have to reset our thinking rather than hoping that oil prices will go back, and energy prices and feedstock prices will go back to what we were used to in the last two decades," he added.

He said that businesses should be prepared for a three-digit oil price, which could happen very soon.

Ambani was also bullish about the Indian economy and said the country will become a $5 trillion economy, though it could take a little longer and do it by 2025, against some projections of 2020.