There has been much written about 'Peak Oil' and 'Lights Out', especially in recent years (please see the books section). The discovery of oil dates back around 670 AD or earlier when it was used in flame-throwing weapons. However, the first commercial oil well started extracting oil in Pennsylvania in 1859.
 
Broadly speaking, oil production reached its peak in the US in the 1970's, the UK in the early 2000's and the world peak is forecast for sometime in the period 2010 to 2015.
 
Of course, this depends on who you believe about each countries reserves, oil fields still to be discovered, the economics of extracting harder to find oil, and the growth rate of the new emerging economies, especially China & India.

 

That said, at the very least, oil production is rapidly moving away from the western world into other regions such as the Middle East. An ongoing reliance on foreign oil could result in significant energy security issues that all western countries should be very concerned about. Arguably, many wars during the 20th century had strong foundations in the need for oil.
 
On top of this, there are all the environmental concerns around greenhouse gases, global warming, etc that the oil-fueled world is blamed for accelerating. As the old saying goes "the Stone Age didn't end because the world ran out of stone"