The decline in production from Saudi should drop only a small percentage per year. They can bring other fields online and have actually planned to do that. But it's still more expensive to do so and therein lies the problem as we've previously discussed. This is true for quite a few fields and regions today.
I take a good engineering look at every energy alternative that comes along that I hear about and can actually access. I've always thought that nuclear fusion held the most promise and it IS considered The Holy Grail of energy production. It has, however, not panned out so far because magnetic bottles tend to bleed.
Oh... almost forgot to mention... I haven't found anything even approaching the EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) of hydrocarbons. Personally, I can't see any other way than that the ruling class will try to cordone off the resource and impoverish the rest of us sooner or later, it's only a matter of the timing. When phosphorus starts giving out, it will truly be over.
