Always find it incredulous that there are those who make such generalizing flippant statements with most likely little or complete lack of understanding of an industry.
The man who made that statement was the Saudi minister for oil for something like 20 years. "Complete lack of understanding of an industry"? He virtually
was the industry. And his point was: before we run out of oil we will move on to something else, just as stone gave way to metals for tools and just as wood gave way to coal which gave way to oil for energy. Those resources were not infinite, and they have not been exhausted.
I spent about 7 years studying peak oil in some detail and I understand the theory fairly well. I am sure oil production
will peak one day, but it is as likely to be due to lack of demand as lack of supply. More importantly, it is worth thinking of what new supplies of lower cost production does to the supply curve. Fracking is now lower cost than the oil sands and deepwater that represented the marginal capacity 5 years ago, and it is capable of growing fast and shoving those sources of supply off the end of the cost curve. There is a lot more than just depletion going on.