This chart give a nice history of production.
What isn't mentioned are the political pressures behind this.
1970s - OPEC (mostly arab world) decides to punish the west for supporting Isreal so cuts supply and increases storage.
Late 1970s - OPEC comes under pressure to increase supply as a) they need the money and b) the world recession is threatening their markets - you can't kill the goose that lays...
1980s - USSR invades Afghanistan, Arabs want them out so agree with the US to cripple the USSR financially by increasing supply to cut oil prices. Oil is one of the USSR's main exports so this works.
1990s - Kuwait - again Arab (OPEC, Saudis) want us to do the work so they steady prices. Also non-OPEC supply increases so they have less control.
During this period Saudi has maintained the balance between the world's demand and supply. If an OPEC member goes offline for a while (e.g. Iran, Iraq, Kuwait) then they make up the shortfall and we pay them to do it. The problem is when they do they risk damaging their super giant fields which need time offline to recover.
So when is the peak ? Based on current world estimates of available reserves this will be when Saudi Arabia peaks. They may have already or it may be anything up to 10-20 years away.
The key thing to note though is that Saudi Aramco is drilling offshore. Why would they need to do that if they have enough stocks onshore ? Its much more expensive and dangerous.
The economic danger to the west, and especially to the US is that those new economies like China and India have the cash. US/China trade in 2009 was $266 bn in China's favour and thats just in one year and in a recession.
So if supplies become short and it ends up being a bidding war to retain supply then they have the money to bid more - and of course the military muscle to prevent anyone bullying them out of the way. Their population will demand it and their political leaders are willing to maintain power by supplying it. They are also buying most of Africa too.
Russia and India are also spending $bns on defence at the moment as they think they may need it to counter China. NATO's influence by comparison is falling.
As for prices, I think we have seen the plataeu for this year at $150 barrell. It may bounce at that level before falling back. Next year demand will be higher as we all finally start to get some of our cash back from the !*&^ing banks we bailed out and start spending again.
That will drive up demand and that is when we will start to have the problems and pressures. The period 2013-2018 is going to be "very interesting" times.