Interesting article, but if anything, the oil companies are exaggerating the size of their "proved" reserves. There are many reasons why Richard Pike is wrong.

If you take into account that many OPEC countries have doubled their reserves (on paper) over night in the past to be able to raise output you will end up with a figure that is way lower than any oil company will ever agree on. And why would they? Nobody wants to be the first to admit that reserves are lower than the general public is made to believe. Because the first oil company to do that will see their stocks plummet.

I think Richard Pike was mainly trying to explain the difference between a known quantity and probablility. I am not sure which you are talking about.

When you say OPEC have doubled their reserves on paper in the past to raise output, could you explain what figure? When? Got a link?

I don't have a link, but I can give you an excerpt from David Strahan's book "The Last Oil Shock":

"In 1985 Kuwait's proved reserves - the most stringent definition - leapt by almost half, from 64 gigabarrels (billion barrels) to 90Gb, and in 1988 they rose again to 92Gb. That same year Abu Dhabi's proved reserves almost tripled to 92Gb, matching Kuwait exactly, and then Iran raised the bidding by one, increasing its proved reserves from 49 to 93Gb, while Iraq more than doubled, from 47Gb to a nice round 100, and Venezuela also jumped by over 100 per cent from 25 to 56Gb. Finally in 1990 Saudi Arabia raised its proved reserves by a whopping 88Gb, from 170 to 258Gb.

So in the space of five years OPEC reserves had risen by 305 billion barrels, despite the fact that no significant discoveries had been made. Most independent observers find this utterly incredible, not only because of the sheer enormity of the revisions, but also because of other suspicious coincidences.

It was Dr Colin Campbell, the grad old man of peak oil, who first spotted them. He noticed that in 1984, just before the game of leapfrog started, Kuwait's declared reserves were 64Gb, and by that year it had produced 21,5Gb, meaning that the total discovered was 85,5Gb. The following year Kuwait increased its 'reserves' to 90Gb, and the closeness of the two figures led Campbell to suspect that Kuwait had simply started declaring the total oil it had ever discovered - including all the oil it had already produced - rather than its remaining reserves.

What was even more suspicious to Campbell was the fact that Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Iran all declared nearly identical reserves, which he interprets purely as the result of quote competition. 'It is absolutely inconceivable that three separate countries should have exactly the same number!' [...] More suspicious yet, many of the new reserve figures subsequently remained unchanged for many years, despite the fact that OPEC countries were producing billions of barrels every year."

^none of that means that the oil is running out, it just means that oil is a corrupt industry.

also this is a comparison of one metric, "proven reserves"... i don't even know how that's calculated but it's not like rocks have labels on them saying exactly how much oil is underneath. Point is, we don't really know how much oil is there, we guess, and people who want to make a scary story use the lowest figures in their arguments.

No the oil isn't running out soon, maybe never even. But that's really not the problem. Economic growth is not possible without oil, and once global oil peaks (in 20 years by reasonable calculations, not scary or exaggerated ones) we will face a problem like we've never had before. From then on, economic growth will only be made possible by restricting the growth of another nation.

The slogan "no blood for oil" was often used in connection with the Iraq war, but there is no avoiding this, unless we come up with a plentiful and powerful enough alternative, which isn't available right now, there's gonna be blood for oil one way or another, and it's gonna make Iraq look like a cakewalk.

again, that's just assertions that you haven't backed up with anything.

Clearly Mink, you just feel guilty for using all of campionidelmondo's oil. Stop trying to justify your actions by claiming there will be lots left for his children when you're dead.