| A lot of things become much more expensive (likely gradually as supplies dwindle). Electricity, until petroleum-burning plants are replaced with nuclear or renewable alternatives. Travel and shipping, while we come up with alternative ways to fuel jets and ocean liners, and replace our car and truck fleets with electric ones. This cost trickles down to any goods not manufactured locally with locally-sourced materials. Food, until we come up with alternatives to petroleum-derived fertilizers and retrofit our farm machinery to use electric motors. Electric motors and batteries and the raw materials needed for the batteries, as demand for them rises. Plastics (made from petroleum derivatives). Food again, as some crops are diverted into use as combustion fuel or to produce plastics. Some of this is already happening to a limited degree as we exhaust the least expensive sources of petroleum. If the process were to accelerate - and especially if it were to outpace our capacity to substitute non-petroleum-dependent tooling and processes for petroleum-dependent ones - rising prices (especially of food) would presumably lead to social unrest and possibly even instability. |
Except for home generators and the like, no one uses oil for electricity generation. Coal and natural gas are used, since they are much cheaper.