Inflation-adjusted, the price of a barrel of crude oil was $23 in 1960, and has been averaging almost $88 in 2013. What does that do to, e.g., suburbs designed around 1960's oil prices?
Most of the interesting questions when it comes to oil have nothing to do with "what happens when it runs out?" The fun stuff is before then.
In other words, "when does long-term demand outstrip long-term supply?" The concept isn't to blame, it's just misinterpretation of it in the popular media.
At any rate, as you pointed out, the interesting question is "what does rising oil price do to the economy?".
In normal usage in economics the "long-term" refers to an equilibrium where supply matches demand. Demand never outstrips supply but instead drives up prices until a new equilibrium is reached at a lower quantity and some current petroleum users are forced into alternatives.
This is the essence of economics: the study of the allocation of scarce resources. Notice "study" as this is a completely natural process.
Re: "peak price" -- the punchline is that demand is almost inelastic!
See also, Arithmetic, Population, and Energy, wherein Dr. Albert Bartlett comments on the inability of most people to reason about concrete examples of exponential growth:
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Electric cars are getting there, and there is always domestic natgas production in the US. It won't be fun, but that's what we get for dragging our feet. The US had this happen in the 70's (oil embargo). It's been 40+ years. Its our own damn fault.
And while that is a relief, it is still very troubling to think about the implications for our transportation infrastructure as a whole (where consumer vehicles represent a minority fraction.)
How will we power our ocean freighters, our freight trains, our 18-wheelers, and our high capacity airplanes without high energy-density hydrocarbons (or with prohibitively expensive hydrocarbons)?
I can imagine nuclear and electric solutions (hand-wavy or hypothetical) to some of these modes, but could they be implemented on a global scale in time?
It makes me wonder what our transportation infrastructure will look like 100 or 200 years from now.
-In what non-obvious ways will we look backwards to people of the future?
-Will these people envy how cheaply we moved goods across the globe?
-Will they laugh at how expensive it was to move things across the globe?
-Will they even have the luxury of thinking about these things?
Pretty depressing if you ask me.
Here's the speech: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-...
To quote: "Most simply, peak oil is about rates, not amounts."
Yes, there are a lot of unconventional resources. They're just a lot harder, more expensive, and most importantly in this context, slower to produce.
On the upshot for me, and the downshot for the rest of civilization, oil (and to a large degree, energy) prices are likely to stay high for the near future for exactly this reason.
However, we haven't developed a viable alternative to liquid fossil fuels in terms of energy-density fast enough. That very, very deeply scares me.