NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A new survey shows economists are ready to shave a half-point off the nation's economic growth forecasts, if oil remains above $50 a barrel for three months, a press report said Thursday.

According to the Wall Street Journal, 54 economists who participated in the paper's survey said if oil stays in the $50-$59 range for an entire quarter, they would shave half a point off their gross domestic product (GDP) forecasts for that quarter.

"Rising oil and energy costs and their negative effects on economic growth, inflation and profits constitute the biggest risk to [the economy] since the bursting of the stock-market bubble in 2000-2001," Allen Sinai of New York City-based Decision Economics told the Journal. "Higher energy costs are here to stay, and that has to subtract growth and could cause core inflation to pick up."

Oil prices have been hovering in the $40s for months, a price the economists said only downgrades GDP by 0.1 percentage point. So far, $50-plus prices haven't seen a sustained run; oil first settled above the $50-mark on the New York Mercantile Exchange earlier in October.

The survey also noted that oil in the $60-$69 price range would cut 1 percent from GDP, according to the economists.

While oil is at an historic high in raw dollar value, it is far cheaper now than the adjusted-for-inflation $80-per-barrel price of the early 1980's.