Oil hasn't changed price because it's finished. The price we see is because the demand is larger than the supply. The difference is small. Peak oil does not mean an abrupt end to oil. It does mean that demand of conventional oil will exceed supplies of conventional crude, thus marking the end to cheap crude.
World oil supply, April 2008
World oil demand, April 2008
So, it's not exactly an oil pinch, it's demand exceeding supply, not in ten years, but now.
Notice most of the "extra" supply (2 million barres per day, roughly) we see in first quarter of 2008 comes from OPEC:
OPEC oil supply, April 2008
Notice also that the arabs are doing what they can. They reached a "spread" (that is, a discount) of 12 dollars in March! The graph also shows that their efforts lasr month to curb oil price were unsuccesful and the market corrected them in a few days.
Oil price spreads. Notice the dip in mid March for Dubai oil: 12 dollars!
Finally, OPEC is exhausting their fields. Did you know that the giant field of Ghawar supergiant oil field accounts for 60% of the saudi oil supply? Guess what: Gawhar is more and more expensive by the day. Engineers are pumping millions of gallons of water trying to extract the oil, a process that dilutes the oil and makes the field progresively exhausted.
That's the reason for the price of oil futures. The new discoveries in Brazil could compensate something of that, but not entirely.
So, 200 dollars the barrel for the end of the decade it's very much of a possibility, if not a certainty.
About the happy ethanol solution, I've mentioned that you need around 11 Hectares of crops for one car. That's unsustainable. The roughly 600 million vehicles on Earth would require around 6.000 million Ha, that is half the arable land in the Earth. http://www.theglobaleducationproject.or ... d-soil.php Even a few percentage points of ethanol for transportation has already stressed the already tense food markets.
The consumption of grains has followed supply closely, and has a trend in the last 40 years of lack of supply. This graph about the world grain stock tells the whole story:
Now, tell me: is there a solution? Not now. So, cars will become less than popular. I give them less than 10 years to be radically changed.
FIA is not helping a bit. It's in "reaction mode". I suggested elsewhere that the only way out of this predicament is starting a new series for extremely energy efficient racing cars. Formula 21 or something.
As I see it, F1 is running its last years as we know it. Not only because of oil but because the lack of democracy at what I've already called Internet-less FIA.
Welcome in the Teuro zone my friend. 
