Roderick Reilly said:

“We haven’t used up fossil fuels by a long shot. As a matter of fact, we have a lot more fossil fuels than we will allow ourselves to drill and mine for after we give ourselves permission to do limited off-shore drilling.”

Be careful with the fallacy:

“More oil remains in the ground than we’ve take out.”

There’s more gold in remaining in California than was ever mined out. However almost all of it is too expensive to mine.

There’s more silver in Nevada and under Virginia City than was ever mined out. However almost all of it is too expensive to mine.

It’s relatively rare for an ore deposit to be completely exhausted. What almost always happens is the mine becomes so deep or costly that the economics of mining the ore is lost. The day before a typical mine is to be abandoned, one can go to the mine face and literally put their hands on high grade ore.

This same rule applies to petroleum or an other nonrenewable resource. That’s the root argument behind Peak Oil.