Hay David G, where did Genghis khan get his oil from? Perhaps we could tap that source.

Then again we could just use the vast amount under the reef. It will probably be some time before the greeny useful idiots latte set start pushing for this. However like their sudden silence on damn building, when it looked like Brisbane could run out of water, they will if their life style is threatened.

I wonder how many lefty posters we would loose, if Google was off the air for a few days?

If we but invent better ways of producing endlessly available and much cheaper than coal-fired power options; and we can! Then these options will simply walk out the door; and into the third world/emerging economies/biggest polluters, especially if we can keep the cold dead hands of the worlds' fossil fuel energy cartels from getting a vice like death-lock grip on them.
We will see these same options emerge, if we but can raise our myopic focus from much more expensive wind and solar, as the only available alternative options.
Given; available wealth determines the options; then the cheaper options will invariably prevail in the poorest economies! Currently, the cheapest options are fossil fuels.
Sure we could lose some coal export incomes; but, if we could demonstrate, that coal-fired zero emission is possible and immediately available, by incorporating large scale carbon absorbing oil rich algae production as a sideline fuel producing enterprise.
Then we could more than replace any income from lost coal sales by exporting the newer technologies!
Perhaps even as income earning owner operators?
Look, every western style economy rests on just two economic pillars; energy and capital, then surely we either replace the energy pillar, with universalistic available/acceptable alternative(s); or, see human caused climate change worsen or even pass a tipping point toward a global catastrophe, from which there is no return?
And just a 2C increase in ambient temperatures is that tipping point?
Moreover, we already have enough Co2 in the atmosphere to almost guarantee we traverse through that tipping point and really must act to lower atmospheric Co2 levels, while we still can.
No amount of strong personality sabre rattling or end of world predictions or pontification, will ever achieve that outcome!
Human nature being unchangeable, and or people forced to get by and or feed a family, on just one or two dollars a day! What are their available options? Buckley's!
However, simply creating cheaper than fossil fuel, endlessly sustainable/available, carbon neutral or carbon absorbing energy options that walk out the door, will do just that. It's simple maths. Rhrosty.

We're all agreed that oil is a finite resource and at some point we'll run out of it, or at least, get to a point where the EROIE is so low it's not worth drilling for it. The question is: will we have the political will to use the remaining oil for the development of a new economy based on renewable fuels? There is growing evidence, however, that renewables alone won't be able to support the number of people we have on the planet now at a reasonable standard of living i.e. their basic needs met. Oil from algae may save the day in terms of transport fuel, of course, let's hope so. But there's another worry, and that is a collapse of the world's economic system (we are currently in a credit bubble that will burst at some stage) that may mean there is no money for the development of all these innovations coming on line. As the Royal Society said last week, we in the developed world have to cut our consumption so that the poor might get out of poverty, but global population growth must stop. As michael_in_adelaide keeps pointing out, we live on a finite planet. At some point, growth has to stop. In the meantime, however, we do face an imminent energy shortage, particularly in oil, and as a community we must focus our time and money on trying to find environmentally sound alternatives. If we can't or don't, then severe contraction in the economy and in population is the only option left.

The BP Statistical Review of World Energy (June 2011), estimated the world uses oil for 33.6% of its energy needs. So finding more oil is essential.

But, it's getting harder to find. And so, exploration is taking place in spots no one would have ever considered before. It means that as the oil price stays high — it's just under USD$120 per barrel - oil fields that were uneconomical to drill have become, well... economical.
Brent Crude - Oil just below USD$120 per barrel.

Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency has called for action on the use fossil fuel based production of electricity, oil supplies peaking and dangerous increase of global warming. In Australia road congestion is growing worse

Peak oil is a fact, not a theory. From US conventional oil production peaking in 1970 to global conventional oil production peaking in 2006 the figures are indisputable. Even institutions such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) and publications like The Economist that are not known for alarmism have admitted that oil production from conventional sources has peaked.

There is a myth that “Oil production is still increasing annually”. Like many peak oil denier myths this oft touted gem is true up to a point, but only if you include unconventional oil, natural gas liquids and biofuels etc. Which means that when you take those figures away you get…that’s right…a peak in the production of oil from conventional sources.

The question is why do we need new frontiers if oil production isn’t peaking? It is an odd concept that oil companies would spend billions of dollars in politically unstable countries and areas where the physical barriers are immense such as the Arctic just for the hell of it. The truth is all the low hanging fruit have been picked. All the easy to access and produce oil has been found and developed. What we are seeing now is increased exploration in increasingly economically dubious areas such as the Canadian tar sands, deepwater drilling, and fracking and horizontal drilling in tight oil plays.

It is as if the pundits pushing “the peak oil myth” have never seen a globe before. The world is round. There is a finite amount of land and ocean that can realistically be developed to economically produce oil and natural gas. From all the evidence that has been collated over the last few years it appears that we are pushing up against these limits right now.

Oil is the most energy dense product available on the planet, it is vital for industrial and economic ‘growth’. We are at the end of this growth paradigm. Substitution works for a while but the laws of diminishing return will come to haunt the old economic theory that we can just swap to something else when one resource becomes scarce.

Bernie Masters, the economic argument you present is dangerously naive but it is a naiveté shared by many of the world's economists -the assumption that market forces will gallop to the rescue and will cause us to switch to alternative forms of energy is consistent with economic theory but inconsistent with the way the real world operates.
The adage Businesses do not plan to fail, they merely fail to plan applies here to governments. As long ago as 1972 the Club of Rome's report warned about the dangers of relying on oil to drive the economy. Yet there was no concerted effort to develop alternatives.
Instead we have painted ourselves in a corner - we have created a world that is dependent on oil and spent little or no money on developing alternatives. So it is not a matter of oil depletion making alternative energy sources more attractive the sad reality is that we have not invested in the R & D to enable us to make a smooth transition to a an economy that does not depend on fossil fuels.