What nobody seems to mention is that the reason we use oil is that it's CHEAPER than the alternatives, most of which have been around for decades. Large-scale plants for extracting hydrogen from water face the twin problems of a) it still takes a great deal of energy to split out the hydrogen and b) if you get a lot of hydrogen in one place, how do you get it to where it's needed.
Most of oil's current alternative require expensive equipment (which in turn uses energy to produce) and high maintenance.