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I agree with you, I did not mean to imply that there are no reserves. There are reserves both foreign and domestic both untapped and tapped (there are productive tapped wells which have been currently left idle by the companies that own them).
The point is just as you stated, consumption out strips production. No resource is
limitless at some threshold diminishing returns kick in, there's also a threshold for saturation (where in consumption meets or exceeds functional rates of production).
To use a simplistic analogy if you are burning more wood for heating in a year than grows in a year consumption is overextended (just like what happens when you spend beyond your means). Reserves will buffer us for awhile but so long as consumption continues to increase we face this selfsame problem (and the specter of
functionally running out of oil) the only question is when. (And regardless of which dates someone applies the answer is "sooner" as each 3rd world nation comes on line/as power and infrastructure needs expand within major industrialized nations like China to keep pace with population demands)
Consumption > Production pretty much always equals a bad day.
Or put another way, it works the same as this:
