Hypocracy

[Gawain of Orkeny]

So to say that oil companies play dramatize the situation it oversimplifying the situation a little bit.

Well Im trying to get through to these guys

Yes, there is an inflation risk. Yes, both Britain and the US are in rate-raising mode. And yes, there are anxieties over terrorist attacks on oil installations. But the world is not running out of oil.
There may be many fears spooking the world's oil markets. But there is no oil "shortage", just as there was no oil "shortage" in the early 1970s or the early 1990s. There are our own apprehensions. And then there are the facts of the matter.

According to a paper in the latest edition of Science magazine, proven world oil reserves exceed 1 tn barrels. Overall, the paper reckons that the world retains more than three trillion barrels of recoverable oil resources. Far from oil "running out" as some might have it, the big story of the oil industry over the past 50 years has been the way in which technological change has continuously worked, not only to yield up new discoveries but also to upgrade the size and extent of existing fields.
The paper, Never Cry Wolf -- Why the Petroleum Age is Far from Over, cites the example of the Kern River field in California, first discovered in 1899. Calculations in 1942 suggested that 54 mm barrels remained. In fact, over the next 44 years the field produced 736 mm barrels and in 1986 was reckoned to have another 970 mm barrels remaining.

From 1981 to 1996, the estimated volume of oil in 186 well-known giant fields across the world discovered before 1981 rose from 617 to 777 bn barrels -- and this without new discoveries. This trend, the paper argues, is likely to continue. For example, the Kashagan field in Kazakhstan was deemedin the second half of the 1990s to hold between two and 4 bn barrels.
In 2002, after completion of only two exploration and two appraisal wells, estimates were officially raised to between seven and 9 bn barrels. In February this year, after four more exploration wells in the area, they were raised again to 13 bn barrels. Recovery rates from fields worldwide have also increased, from about 22 % in 1980 to 35 % today.

Doomsters are wrong -- there's plenty of oil

And again this isnt touching on shale oil. As I said its the enviormentalists who are behend this. They want alternative enrgy sources developed not because their cheaper but because their cleaner. Theres absolutley nothing wrong with that. In fact as a also stated Im all for it. But dont try telling us were running out of oil. They cant wait for that day. Again this is the hypocricy Im speaking about. Just come out and tell the truth.

More

From that snapshot the oil situation doesn't look good. But there's little reason to assume that the next five years will simply see a continuation of current trends. Thanks to a combination of higher prices, increased exploration and production spending, and improved technology (page 32), oil supplies are poised to grow much faster than they have in recent years. Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a respected energy consultant, sees 20 or more major new fields coming on line each year through 2010. Altogether those fields could boost worldwide production capacity 15%, from 87.9 million barrels per day to 101.5 million by the end of the decade, CERA estimates. As a result, supply should exceed demand by 7 million bbl. per day, a huge leap from the current cushion of 1 million bbl. That should take pressure off prices. "OPEC countries have the potential, and [most] are increasing production," says Peter Jackson, a CERA researcher. "Non-OPEC production has increased at quite a lick compared to the 1990s."

Where is the new supply coming from? Pretty much across the globe. After hiking its exploration-and-production expenditures by 50% since 2000, to $12 billion a year, Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM ) expects to add more than 1.2 million bbl. per day of new supply by 2007 from 27 projects, including ones off the coast of Angola and Russia's Sakhalin Island. Chevron Corp. expects its Big Five fields in West Africa, Australia, the Gulf of Mexico, and Kazakhstan to generate 800,000 more bbl. per day by 2009 -- a third of its current production. "We've got that pretty well mapped out," says Chevron Vice-Chairman Peter J. Robertson. "Projects are more complex now. They take a little longer. There's still plenty of oil in the world."

Is There Plenty Of Oil?