[MikeyOne]

There is no real question about what is going to happen, only a question of how fast.

Oil takes millions of years to create.

The earth is a finite volume, and contains a finite (not growing) amount of oil.

Locating usable oil is getting harder (easy supplies of rich crude have been found and uused up) making extracting the remainder harder and more expensive.

The result:

Continual rise in price (look at price trends over the last 30 years - from 40 cents a gallon to 3 dollars).

Usage rate decreases due to cost pressure (some de-celeration of cost pressure)

Eventual personal use rationing or limitations (happened in the 70's and the situation is more advanced now)

Gradual legislation reducing or limiting private gas vehicle usage. Eventual complete elimination of private oil burining vehicles.

Restrictions of oil usage to commercial use and then Government only (military cant operate without it - this will become a national security concern)

Meanwhile, we will be scrambling to seek alternatives - fuels, drive trains, public transportation ... to address these. But many of these indirectly depend on oil (electricity is primarily created from oil)

So will this happen over 5 years? 20? 50? 100? If you look around you can find some scientific projections. Lets just say that the overall averge of these is closer to 10 than to 100.

And Im an optomist!