I'm impugning your claim that the price of oil is too low.
I asked you to complete the information required to back up the claim and you rejoined with some aside about how there were multiple ways to interpret one of the words in my question.
Sure it does. If it becomes trivial to conjure the equivalent, then it doesn't matter if oil is gone.
My framing is sloppy (because I only talk about the future value of oil rather than the cost of obtaining the equivalent), but I think the point survives it, because the value of oil would drop to the cost of obtaining the equivalent.
Pretty high. It is a primary source of long-chain hydrocarbons, a primary feedstock for chemistry. Most biologically active chemicals produced by industry rely on oil as the chief starting material.
Though any carbon feedstock can address that. For a materials standpoint, there are substitutes.
Natural gas as feedstock to the Haber-Bosch process and coking coal in steel production, for reducing ore, are both much more formidable. They account for a large fraction the consumption of both (15% in the case of coal), and substitutes are difficult.
The story of where Earth's crustal iron comes from, when, and how, particularly as banded iron formations, is another interesting story.
The cost is what's required to create it.
The price is what it exchanges for.
These are three independent attributes.
Generally, though, sustainability comes when cost <= price < value.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/48rd02/cost_va...