The difference between peak oil and shale oil is the EROI which is very bad (between 1 and 2) compared to conventional (20 to 50). This would make it absolutely useless as an energy source, except we also get free Nat. gas out of it.
Once the EROI on all our fossil energy sources gets below 1 we won't be able to use any, despite some of it still being in the ground.
A better analogy than peak wheat would be: this is like peak fish except we now have better bottom trawling fishing nets, and electric pulse fishing to be able to get the last remaining fish out there.
As technology increases with oil extraction and alternate energy sources come into play, the peak oil scenario will likely not be realized.
No transition. Energy usage is stacking up. Globally, renewable energy sources are built in addition to fossil energy sources. See source below - compare relative vs. absolute :
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...
Peak oil doesn't care that the relative share of oil as an energy source is decreasing (which is true) . It's the global number of oil barrels extracted out of the ground that matters.
Today from a cursory google, oil prices per barrel are over 70$.
Fortunately for our society we subsidized it to survive this brief period.
Right now oil prices are still at 75 dollars a barrel. That’s still much higher than before we hit peak conventional oil. It could be one reason we never really recovered from 2008.
It seems to me that we are stuck in an “oil price strait jacket”. Demand keeps rising until the price shoots up and then goes down hard but making a lot more oil isn’t feasible either. We could be in a long slow energy stagnation. This is evident in the amount oil imported into Europe for eg.
Shale oil has probably saved us from an outright disaster.