The current price of oil has nothing to do with Hubbert's Peak. There is no issue whatsoever on the supply side, it's being entirely driven by the skyrocketing demand, especially in the U.S., China, and India.
True. The Peak has not yet arrived.
I have yet to see quantified proof that the increase in demand is commensurate with the increase in price.
The price of oil is speculative and does not obey all the rules of supply and demand.
It's also being driven by the decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, which means that even if there were no changes in supply or demand, it would cost more dollars to buy a barrel of oil today than it did five years ago.
Not really. Demand is high. Supply is constrained in the short run in terms of the light sweet crude the [also capacity constrained] refiners prefer. Whether the price movement over the last year has anything to do with peak oil will only be apparent if in a year or two significant additional supply has not appeared on the market.
One of the points many peak oil advocates miss is that the most marginal stripper wells get plugged or at least shut in during oil price busts. Other than in some nasty offshore environments there will not be much in the way of abandonments with the price of oil north of $60. This should tell us a lot about what is possible in terms of flat out production and the absolute depletion curves based strictly on reservoir dynamics.