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The oil we used today is as cheap as almost any other time in life

What!? http://www.macrotrends.net/136... How exactly $100 a barrel is as cheap as $30 a barrel?

That price increase starting in 2004 reflects the (cheap) conventional oil extraction not keeping up with the demand (what you call "running out"). The higher prices allowed the unconventional (more expensive) oil to be developed. Those however will "run out" much faster than the conventional oil (oil from shale is expected to peak around 2017), requiring the next step of oil price increase for the even harder oil to be economical to extract. However it would seem that this next step won't happen because the major oil corporations have recently started to dial back their investments into future oil extraction. That means a crash of oil production, and therefore a crash of the global economy as well.

There's also the problem that unconventional oil shouldn't be extracted in the first place if we want to stay at manageable levels of climate change...

It puzzles me greatly why oil has not already become a currency and not running up in price far more than gold

http://www.macrotrends.net/1335/dollar-gold-and-oil-chart-last-ten-years

Measured over the last 10 years, oil has increased in value more than gold. Its 2008 price peak was probably an anomaly caused by market speculation, but other than that it has been increasing steadily.