Here's something else to think about while concocting theories of what might or might not be:
If you stand in the USA, anywhere between the middle of Kansas and the middle of Nevada, anywhere north or south of there from the Arctic Circle to south of Venuzuela, you are standing above the world's largest oil and natural gas formation, more than 15x all the rest of the world's known reserves ADDED TOGETHER (circa 2010). And, just to add to this: anywhere a geodesic dome is relieved of its natural gas deposit, then left alone, it will refill in less than a decade (8 years on average) to more than 90% of its original volume of gas as it percolates upward form the molten core of this planet - a process that will continue for the life of this place, powered by gravity itself. Wherever an impermeable dome of rock/shale/clay traps the rising natural gas molecule, a gas pocket forms: if there is biomass there, it becomes oil. Both contain water with it, usually close to 80%+ by volume. Guess where that water also came from?
If you wonder where this info came from: I was part of the team that, between 1984 and 1988, developed the means to measure this formation and identify it as part of a joint-oil company's research project (headed by AMOCO then, included Tenneco, Shell and others) into the US oil reserves. Note that this formation does NOT include the extensive shale natural gas formations found in almost every US State: those take about 40 years to refill themselves, if drained, because of less porosity. I designed the first-ever mobile "computer van" for this research (and hand-built all the electronics save the HP desktop computer we used) and fielded it in 1985, revolutionizing forever how oil and gas exploration became since. It also provided the researchers (scientists) the geologic "signatures" they needed to find this massive formation, and later (2002-ish timeframe) to also discover that this situation is unique in all this world. The reserves in the Middle East are a large, singular pocket, which Russia shares, and which does not regenerate: it was the unique construction of the North American continent in this planet's crust that has created this situation. The Middle East has also fractured their largest geodesic domes in their careless haste to produce, which means those will not have any chance of refilling in any case.
So...knowing that even if the rest of the world "ran out" of hydrocarbon fuels so that America (including North-South portions) became the major supplier: how do you suppose that may shape the future of energy, and transportation? You can't fill a boat with electricity and ship it to someone else's ports.
