School chemistry means it was a ~20 year old prediction 30 years ago, based on known oil deposits 50 years ago.

It would have been a hopeful prediction from today's perspective, as we would necessarily have stopped pumping and burning oil by now, but unfortunately we haven't.

That was true back then though. It boils down to how oil "reserve" is defined, which is all about oil we know how to extract.

It didn't turn out to be true though. "True back then" seems like a weird way to phrase "wrong".

No, it wasn't wrong, because "oil reserves" are defined as: "quantities of crude oil and natural gas from known fields that can be profitably produced/recovered from an approved development", which means they change over time, when we find new oil or develop new technologies. And that's also what happened.

Also maybe at one point accept that "Oil" with an EROEI dangerously getting to below the 1.0 mark is not the same "Oil" as was talked-about 30 years ago: if your shale sands have to get burnt with local coal or natgas to get a pipeline-able liquid, but the total energy spent on the process is about as much as will be dispersed by combustion engines down the line... then you're treading very murky waters indeed.

Here's an article which is nearly 30 years old. Neo-malthusians remain just as undeterred by your observation as they were in 1997.

https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/

Wow, was Wired... trolling ?! Did they seriously believe they could convince opponents with this ?

(But it was probably just preaching to the choir...)