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I love oil. I love the "energy potential" it puts at my use at the lowest possible out-of-pocket "price". Even if I have to blind myself of the "costs" on the system. The system you need to have a decent healthy life.

I love that in 1/10 barrel of "light sweet crude" grade oil I have the equivalent of 1.25yrs of human labor at a current Brent Crude out-of-pocket price of just USD$10.50.

Would you flip burgers for 1.25yrs to earn USD$10.05?
If you were willing to do it for federal minimum wage of roughly $15,000/yr, would I be willing to pay you if I can use a machine that only requires me to feed it $10.50 of fossil-fuel-derived energy?

Of course something's not going right for back in 1970 people paid slightly less than 10cents for the same 1/10 barrel of light sweet crude. Further, something tells me am being swindled even more for back in 1970 it was actual crude oil sold. Today that's not the case since according to Exxon's 2011 prospectus their actual reserves are more than 50% crude condensate (notice the "condensate").

This means, as an industrial consumer you better start paying attention to the "grade" of "oil" you purchase for it is not the same oil.
Hence, and this is key, not the same energy density. Meaning you pay MORE USD$ out-of-pocket for LESS work potential in the "condensate" you're now getting (one factor why so many refiners can't make a buck nowadays and rather shut their plants eh?).

Am fine paying more, as long as it is not as much as I'll have to pay you to do the same work.
But then we get to the finitude of the resource. The fact that petroleum and its condensates are a finite resource.

Meaning it will get to the point where it will cheaper to pay you to do the work that oil now affords me at these out-of-pocket prices.

At that point it may be "cheaper" for me to force you do the work by removing labor and safety laws, lowering quality of life expectations, freezing/lower minimum wage, outlawing unions.
If it gets that expensive it would be much easier to lobby some unethical Congressperson for certainly there's no lobbying a depleting oil well, or bribing tar sands to have similar energy density as light sweet crude.

And if there are many more like you to take your place, then, as a true capitalist, I can always rest assured that were you to die, others will replace you by similar means at not much more "cost" to my pocket. They'd probably want to replace you.

Oh wait, that's what we've been doing since the 1970s, yes?

So you see? Is not just a green Utopia simpleton greens wish would materialize so we could replace oil, is that the depletion of oil means likelier chances of very ugly traits in human nature will come back to the fore.

And so give a toast to the energy slaves the different grades of crude affords you.
And pay attention to those "grades" of crude for some will allow multiple more while some grades will allow less, a lot less. So few in fact that it will be impossible to tune up our infrastructure.

Oh wait, that could explain why USA now has the highest number of key infrastructure components (ie bridges) either needing immediate maintenance, getting postponed on maintenance or being closed. Ditto for smaller roads getting converted back to gravel.