Running Out of Oil

   For more than a century, Western governments have been relentlessly upbeat about the long-term outlook 
   for  oil. Is the world running out of oil? Whenever pessimists claimed that supplies were running low, as they
   have many times, oil companies always seemed to discover huge new fields. 
   

It's now an article of faith among oil optimists, including those in the U.S. government, that global oil reserves won't run out for at least four decades, which seems like enough time to devise a whole suite of alternative energy technologies to smoothly and seamlessly replace oil.