The only problem is that demand is growing at an increasingly rapid clip because 2 billion Chinese and Indians figured out... “Hey!! We can have cars too!!”, and all the easy-to-get oil has been found. This isn’t like growing corn where you just plow another field.
Also, oil is just increasingly expensive to get out of the ground. Thats going to have a significant impact on how much its worth. There are many reasons why we’re not going back to the old days. An overly intrusive government certainly plays a role, but thats not all of the story.
The problem is that America's government is prohibiting it from developing its own energy, among other things. It is MUCH of the story. There are a lot of alternative energies and as long as the free market is able to innovate ways to meet energy needs, energy is never going to be a problem. Human being are probably the single most adaptable creature on planet earth -- by the time we ran out of oil, we'd have figured out a viable alternative.
It's human nature.