Six years back or so natural gas was worth a lot - then all of the sudden there were huge discoveries offshore while at the same time technology improved such that onshore shale formations previously not economical became cheap and prolific. Now natural gas is cheap, cheap, cheap and no one goes around saying we're running out.
Oil is no different. Oil isn't endless, and we are nowhere near reaching peak oil (maybe we have in conventional oil, but even that's debatable). It's really just a matter of how economic it is to produce even the known resources and how well they are managed. Many countries (the bigger oil producing ones) tend to damage access to the resources by producing too fast (due to the discount factor to time/money). There's opportunity to get that back in the future with new technology and time.
To give an example comparing the natural gas situation to oil, Canada is making huge strides in reducing the cost of producing heavy oil, it used to be $50+ per barrel and is now down to $19-33 per barrel. With oil prices at $80 per barrel you can see the profit margin is large enough to make money.
Most oil companies take the majority of profit from oil and re-invest into buying more properties, investing most of it into discovering new resources. They wouldn't be doing that if they thought there was none left to find. Check out the top producers of oil and look at their investments vs. their profits and you'll see.
As a side note... I don't see why much of the oil demand can not be off loaded to natural gas should the gov't + manufacturing companies choose to invest that way. Vehicles can run, houses can be heated, and plants can all operate on natural gas.... Natural gas has proven to be more environmentally cleaner than coal, they even produce less environmental damages than the facilities used to produce electric and corn oil alternatives. So I really don't get all the hype. It's all just market fixing/speculation for the most part and lack of quality information.
Oil is no different. Oil isn't endless, and we are nowhere near reaching peak oil (maybe we have in conventional oil, but even that's debatable). It's really just a matter of how economic it is to produce even the known resources and how well they are managed. Many countries (the bigger oil producing ones) tend to damage access to the resources by producing too fast (due to the discount factor to time/money). There's opportunity to get that back in the future with new technology and time.
To give an example comparing the natural gas situation to oil, Canada is making huge strides in reducing the cost of producing heavy oil, it used to be $50+ per barrel and is now down to $19-33 per barrel. With oil prices at $80 per barrel you can see the profit margin is large enough to make money.
Most oil companies take the majority of profit from oil and re-invest into buying more properties, investing most of it into discovering new resources. They wouldn't be doing that if they thought there was none left to find. Check out the top producers of oil and look at their investments vs. their profits and you'll see.
As a side note... I don't see why much of the oil demand can not be off loaded to natural gas should the gov't + manufacturing companies choose to invest that way. Vehicles can run, houses can be heated, and plants can all operate on natural gas.... Natural gas has proven to be more environmentally cleaner than coal, they even produce less environmental damages than the facilities used to produce electric and corn oil alternatives. So I really don't get all the hype. It's all just market fixing/speculation for the most part and lack of quality information.