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There is a finite supply of oil in the ground. Humanity is currently consuming it at a rate of 85 million barrels per day.
We have already used up about half of the total supply. Most of that was easy to get at and cheap to produce.
The second half will be more difficult to get at, and more expensive to produce.
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This is going to be a problem, but in some ways it will also be an opportunity.
It's a problem because our society is heavily dependent on oil. Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food.
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We have known about the problem for some time.
The petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert, in the 1950's, said that the rate at which oil fields were discovered in any country or area (an "oil province") tended to rise and then decline, and the rate at which the oil was extracted from those oil fields followed the same pattern - about 30-40 years later.
This became known as "Hubbert's Peak"
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