As the oil dwindles the price will skyrocket. If you think that you can maintain the lifestyle you have now it means you better be pretty rich. The division between the haves and the have nots will be greater than ever. Wars will be fought over the remaining oil. I believe the future is grim. They waited too long to realistically  replace oil with alternatives. This could have been done years ago but the greed is overwhelming for those in the oil business and we are the ones who will pay, our children for sure. When oil is at a thousand dollars a barrel what do you think the economy will be like? If gas is over 3 dollars a gallon at 100 dollars a barrel what will it be at a thousand dollars a barrel? 30 or 40 bucks a gallon? How much will it cost you to go back and forth to a job? You think food prices are high now but just wait. The cost of transporting all that Chinese crap to Walmart will be so high that the average person won't be able to afford to shop there much less afford the price of transportation. It's the end of civilization as we know it my friends. The worlds governments have known all this for years but they can't advertise it. If people knew the reality of the situation it would be riots and panics never seen before.

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

That's the problem with money - you can never have the ultimate amount.  You can always add more 0's.  If there was a maximum amount you could have, and that wasn't too high, then we'd probably be in a better position.  But numbers can go on forever (unlike earth's resources).

Best regards,
Steven.

Money, like any other good, does have diminishing marginal utility.

The problem is that it's not just about the money, it's mainly about energy itself. 

Surely we know how to make sythetic oil, but the proces COSTS energy, and if it costs more than it gives back, it's no energy source.

Money can be used to all sorts of trick - you can make them out of thin air in the form of bonds, derivatives, or loans. 

However, you can't loan energy, you can't say "I will produce today, and pay the cost next year".

We are too much used to think about costs just in terms of money. However, there is energy cost associated with most actions we take - baking a pizza, driving to work, turning on light, etc. Until now, the cost of energy was marginal, so these were not taken into account, but that time is over.

Globalization will have to be rollbacked - hauling trinkets in ships around the globe just to exploit slave labor in Asia won't be profitable anymore. Production will have to be localized, and energy-efficient.

Most importantly, the obsolete economic system that rewards consumption will have to be scrapped. Conservation must be rewarded instead.

Syntehtic oil is not a long-term answer.  It's expensive, and as you said it's not efficient.  however, when you have an excess of one resource, an ability to convert, and a demand- you do what you must.

Ultimattely- we're not going to solve this issue without nuclear fusion- which is what we should be spending our defense dollars on.

The average person doesn't even begin to understand the problem: They think that the leaders of the west will pull some "policy" from their sleeves and the problem will be solved.

The truth is that consumers never payed the true energy price (except for the small negligible percentage coming from renewable resources).

What you pay is the cost to extract, move and reprocess oil, gas and coal. It was never the cost to "create" or gather the energy they represent (MJ? kCal?) per unit resource. This is why we don't have hydrogen cars yet. The tech exists but what about packing that energy into the hydrogen fuel?

It gets worse:

long before you consider energy as the thing that fuels the economy, think about its strategic value. Fossil fuel are essential in maintaining standing armies; without it there is no military might. Nations can afford to have their populations in the brink of rebellion due to starvation, however losing military might and control is a big no no. So, long before the mini hydrogen car is given to the average consumer, you must meet the hydrogen powered military equipment.

In any case, the people driving these: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/golden-bentley-continental-gt-spotted-in-dubai-ar74743.html will not be happy. The fact is that kingdoms and democracies will fall or change hands because there will be a huge shift of power. And all the usual excuses for starting war will come up again: religion, race, color, political ideals.

At the end of the day, someone else will be driving that golden bentley in 2100 with fossil fuel.

Enjoy the smell of your car's exhaust, while you can, cause it will be a rich person's privilege at 2100 along with natural water, vegetables and meat, cause these are going out as well.

Very interesting times indeed.. damn that Chinese curse..

Pretty much everything is upon us...question is...what are we going to do about it? Expecting congress to so something about this is like asking the fox to guard the hen house. The people in Egypt had the right idea...now if only the people here would learn from that. I'd be willing to bet that someone somewhere has a great idea that would work...but as long as our government won't reap immediate profits from it nothing will happen until it's almost to late...if we're lucky.

And actually there are solutions already...but people are so brain washed into thinking certain things are so bad we can't possibly consider them again nothing will happen. Hemp anyone? And I'm not saying it the end all solution...but it should at least be considered.

Well, that's where you are wrong. More expensive gas maybe just a nuisance for you, because you have reserves and you'll just cut spending. First aspect of it that when everyone is forced to cut back spending because of energy prices, we will have another round of recession (since we still have that obsolete consumption-rewarding system).

However, in poorer parts of the world higher energy mean food costs increase over a point they cannot survive any longer - we are talking about people who have barely enough to eat (and I don't mean 3000kcal/day eating like in America or so, I mean really a bare minimum), so these people are pushed to revolt, and we can see it spread over the Middle East and Northern Africa. Once pro-American regimes in key states (like Saudi Arabia) topple, expect oil to sharply rise, because the new forces in power won't be so enthusiastic to exchange precious resources for overpriced trinkets, like Saudi king, for example.

Basically, we see increasing tension in the system due to the shrinking per-capita energy allowance globally. While the process is gradual, it can "snap" in a similar way a steel rod snaps under increasing pressure - suddenly and violently. Greatest problem is that western government, so called "elites" from mostly economic circles, and with them majority of western public live in total denial of these problems.

Oil companies pay higher than average taxes, there is no tax incentive.  There is no subsidy either, when people talk about the real cost of oil, they're being rhetorical ass wipes and referring to how much it would take to create it, not a government program.

If you want to see something that's subsidized, you need to look no further than all the bullshit renewable energy programs, like ethanol(lets all slit our wrists and get it over with faster!) or the absurdly inefficient wind farm T. Boon Pickens lost his shirt on.  GE alone gets billions in subsidies every year for their various money whoring efforts, all at our expense.

The tech is already there, fossil fuels are just cheaper.

Only in a world gone insane would it be a tax incentive to spend a million dollars, get a million back, and not pay taxes on your profit of zero.

Since the world has gone insane, I'll give you that anyway.  So somewhere in the mix of massively high taxes, the cost of crude is over 40% tax for those of you living in lala land, the US government gives a few bucks off here and there for something that would normally count as depreciable tax modifiers anyway as a standard expense for a semi permanent purchase or a straight up profit reduction as an operational cost.

That's much better than making more money mixing diesel in with your pulp to burn it for power than you do off the actual sawmill output!

Yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot about all the revolts that took place a couple years ago when gas prices spiked...

Pinning the issues in the ME on gas is ridiculous, not to say that pressure on their economies generally is not an issue.  But in any case, if the system in the 3rd world is unsustainable what is the solution?  Poor standards of living have been in existence there for centuries, more gas, less gas doesn't matter.  It's not even as though the transport of foodstuffs is really an issue either, at least not for Africa, because we (meaning the West) have been dumping food on them for decades, to no avail.  Now we can agree that the problem is their despotic governments, and we can agree that the west has tacitly (and occasionally overtly) supported those governments, and that that is a bad thing.

But that doesn't get us past the part where more expensive gas really means much of anything for those countries.  Sad to say, they are screwed either way.  And that's still entirely beside the point that the notion of peak oil is nonsense, at least in the manner it is commonly used to attempt to scare people.

Now, I'm not some oil company shill, I do strongly believe that we (again as the west, but the US in particular) need to diversify our energy portfolio, and in particular move away from importing oil from those same ME countries you are concerned about.  We need renewable energy solutions, we need new/more nuclear plants, we need to begin the transition away from ICEs being the standard.

But, to think that regime change in SA would mean no more oil is just bizarre.  It's not as though their oil has any particular value to them, since they lack the industry to refine it into anything useful.  They need to sell it, if not to the US then to China or Europe, or Russia.  Who else is there?  But sure, it would be disruptive, it would drive the speculators crazy (and lets not ignore their role in driving the price of oil up), so we need to find alternatives to ME oil, but not because of peak oil fear mongering, because it is the smart thing to do.

The funny thing (funny interesting not funny ha-ha) about all the ideology stuff - the richer people also benefit greatly from having fewer people with virtually nothing.

Best regards,
Steven.