When I was in college in the early 1970's, ALL the science classes that I attended had an obligatory screed that oil was going to run out by the end of the decade - there just wasn't anymore to be found.
It does seem that there is more and more evidence that oil is created by an abiotic process of methane percolating from the earth's core into its mantle/crust. I find it unconvincing that all those dead dinosaurs and their plants found their way down 7 miles to undergo a chemical change that is yet to be recreated in the lab. Places like the La Brea Tar Pits also pose a bit of a conundrum to the biotic oil folks..
Read the following.
In 1914, the Bureau of Mines said U.S. oil reserves would be exhausted by 1924. In 1939, the Interior Department said the world had 13 years worth of petroleum reserves. Then a global war was fought and the postwar boom was fueled, and in 1951 Interior reported that the world had ... 13 years of reserves. In 1970, the world’s proven oil reserves were an estimated 612 billion barrels. By 2006, more than 767 billion barrels had been pumped and proven reserves were 1.2 trillion barrels. In 1977, Scold in Chief Jimmy Carter predicted that mankind “could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.” Since then the world has consumed three times more oil than was then in the world’s proven reserves.
Just when we think man knows it all, we get kicked in the groin.