The visible universe is finite. That isn't saying a blessed thing.
"we are drilling the ones where we have not drilled before."
Duh. But in fact, we don't drill even in places where we know there are gobs of oil. Exhibit A, Alaska. Exhibit B, offshore restrictions. Exhibit C, half of Siberia, where capital market inefficiencies prevent sensible exploitation.
"that will continue until eventually, there will be no place left to drill"
Does not follow. It may continue indefinitely, we may drill in new and within old fields (to different depths, with different tech, etc) indefinitely, and we may find more oil in both, indefinitely. We don't know any such thing.
"that does not 'make' more oil, it just makes some available which would not have been otherwise."
A distinction without a difference. And as for making more oil, we have no idea how fast oil is being made, today. We know it is, because there is oil there and it did not pop into existence out of nothing. If it took millions of years to make it biotically, then it still might be being made faster than we are using it, because we do not know whether we are using more than a millioneth of it a year.
Geological processes continue. Biomatter subsides today, is compressed under rock today. There is a rate in as well as a rate out, and since we do not know the rate in, we do not know whether there is net depletion. If natural gas forms abiotically as well, the rate in might be far higher than anybody suspects, because the processes involved may take times much shorter than millions of years.
"oilfields we have come to take for granted since the '50s either have depleted or are beginning to decline."
Um, duh, but the conclusion does not follow. It is well know that individual wells produce the most oil as soon as they are drilled, and trail off thereafter. Every individual site is a declining stream, but it does not follow that their sum is a declining stream when the number of them is not fixed. And in fact, the overall stream has never declined. It has increased continually as long as oil has been used.
As for Saudi Arabia's capacity, they have the oil to swamp present demand and drive the price as low as they please. They might not have that many wells operating, but they could readily drill them. But they don't want to, and why would they? They produce oil at a cost of a few dollars a barrel. They can afford to build as many more wells as they like, with oil at $50. But instead they limit their additions of capacity to what they expect they will actually use to meet present and slightly higher near future demand. It is not in their interest to extract oil faster than the world wants it.
And there is at present no shortage of oil in the world. On the surface I mean, not under it. US and world stocks have built continually throughout the present price spike, which is security related not oil fundamentals related. At these prices, supply exceeds demand. Why would they add gobs more capacity, therefore? Everyone who wants oil at $50 has it.
They might want to discourage development elsewhere. And they have marginally increased production and added capacity for that reason. But as minor shifts at the margin. Fundamentally, they are perfectly happy to sell oil for $50 a barrel. The only concern they might have over it is that $50 oil might call forth so much capacity that is drives oil to $30, hardly a sign of inability to produce.
Meanwhile, all this has been focused narrowly on oil, which is certainly the most economic chemical fuel available. We have hundreds of years worth of coal, without even looking for more. We have gobs of less useful forms that become economical only at higher prices (tar sands, shale, etc). While coal is more economical for electricity generation now, it can also be synthetically converted to liquids - Germany ran WW II on the stuff. Beyond those, we can grow alcohols etc.
Energy simply is not scarce nor practically speaking limited (on scales humans use etc), and all the attempts to convince people it is are impositions on general scientific ignorance, with hardly more thought behind it than "it is finite" - as though anything isn't.
I am tired, but let me point this out. Every individual site is not necessarily independant of those surrouding it. Often there is demonstrable communication within the reservoir, which follows relatively easily delineated geologic boundaries. This is how reserves can be estimated in the first place. You are welcome to harbor any delusions you wish.
Does not follow. It may continue indefinitely, we may drill in new and within old fields (to different depths, with different tech, etc) indefinitely, and we may find more oil in both, indefinitely. We don't know any such thing.
We who? I make my living finding new oil in old fields. There is a limit to it, believe me. Indefinitely is a long time. It does not change the fact that there is only so much porosity present in the rock column, and if it were ALL filled with oil, and it could ALL be extracted, that eventually it would be ALL gone. At some point, and I have drilled there, you run out of rock which can have oil in it, by virtue of the fact that the bottom hole temperatures are too high for oil to exist. This, too has been proven, but they did find a neat source of liquid sulfur.
I don't claim to know everything, but don't bother playing prep-school debate games with me.
As for Saudi Arabia's capacity, they have the oil to swamp present demand and drive the price as low as they please. They might not have that many wells operating, but they could readily drill them.
You had better learn a little about oil production. They can't do it without wrecking future production. Drilling more holes in depleted fields in the same reservoirs (isotropic flow) will yield more holes, and opportunites for enhanced recovery, but not that much more oil in the long run--nothing like an untapped reservoir. Without new, untapped reservoirs, they will not show a significant gain.
As for drilling in Siberia, ANWR, offshore California, etc., there are political constraints which are imposed. Despite those constraints, there is (again) only so much reservoir, which has a finite volume, which has only so much oil in it. Even if it could all be recovered, there is a limit.
There is no evidence that these reservoirs are "refilling" from some mystical source, although there are a couple of reservoirs in the world which are apparently connected to deeper reservoirs by faults and fracture sets. These are of Cretaceous age, and relatively young rock. No one has provided any such example from deeper strata which do not overlie either a known reservoir or older, undrilled sedimentary rocks with the potential to be reservoirs. Most of that is offshore, cratonic basins are getting pretty well explored.
As for bringing up solar, coal, nuclear, etc., nice change of topic, we were talking about peak oil as a concept.