Rather than reading about new elephant discoveries, you are more likely going to be reading we have less oil than assumed...
From 1982, divergences occurred within OPEC members to fix quotas and prices as competition increased. Furthermore, the share of OPEC dropped from 55% of all the petroleum exported in the 1970s to 42% in 2000, with an all-time low of 30% in 1985. That year, Saudi Arabia lowered its oil price to increase its market share. In 1985 OPEC members were competing with each other to be allotted larger quotas. OPEC allocates quotas to members in proportion to their proven oil reserves. Kuwait's reserves "climbed" from 64 billion to 92 billion barrels. The reserves of the United Arab Emirates were boosted from 31 billion to 92 billion barrels. Iran announced that its real reserves were 93 billion barrels, up from a previous 47 billion barrels. The most significant “increase” in oil reserves in 1985 was from Iraq when its reserves went to 100 billion barrels, up from previous figures of 47 billions. Those inflated and possibly non-existent reserve figures remain today. The result was an oil counter-shock that lowered the price of the barrel under 20 dollars, even reaching a record low of 15 dollars in 1988. The oil market was again a market controlled by the demand.
people.hofstra.edu
The draft law was filed in light of the controversy raised recently on the actual size of proven Kuwaiti oil reserves after the Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (PIW) reported in January that Kuwaiti reserves were only half of the announced figure of 100 billion barrels. PIW also claimed that proven reserves amounted only to 24.2 billion barrels, citing internal Kuwaiti records it claimed it had seen. Kuwaiti oil authorities have denied the report, with Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmad Fahd Al-Sabah saying that the report spoke only about 31 reservoirs which were being used by Kuwait while ignoring 74 other untapped reservoirs. MP Saadoun had sent a lengthy question to Sheikh Ahmad inquiring about the report but the question has not yet been answered
Message 22398668
There was one set of such revisions that look particularly suspect though. Between 1983 and 1990 the members of OPEC all announced dramatic reserve additions without announcing any new discoveries. This table lists stated reserves in billions of barrels (Gb) with the suspect additions highlighted:
Adding suspicion to these dramatic increases is that fact that OPEC had in 1982 just one year before the Iraqi revision in 1983 allocated production quotas to each member to ensure no single country flooded the market lowering the price for all. These quotas were based on the countries stated reserves, if your reserves increase your quota increases allowing more oil to be sold and more money made.
Now comes the interesting part. Many estimates been have made of the world Ultimate for oil, a recent example being the 1995 USGS global survey. The value they published was 2275 Billion Barrels (or Giga - barrels, Gb). These studies are always based on estimates of reserves taken directly from producing countries themselves. Therein lies the problem. Many OPEC countries have been announcing reserve numbers which are frankly very strange. Either their reported reserves remain the same year after year - suggesting that new discoveries exactly match production, or they have suddenly increased their reported reserves by unfeasibly large amounts.
vitaltrivia.co.uk
This is clearly shown in the following table:
which I kindly reproduced for you, except for the red.
Table 1: Selected Reported Reserves (Gb) with Suspect Increases
Year Abu
Dhabi Dubai Iran Iraq Kuwait Saudi
Arabia* Venezuela Spurious
Amount
1980 28.00 1.40 58.00 31.00 65.40 163.35 17.87 0
1981 29.00 1.40 57.50 30.00 65.90 165.00 17.95 0
1982 30.60 1.27 57.00 29.70 64.48 164.60 20.30 0
1983 30.51 1.44 55.31 41.00? 64.23 162.40 21.50 11.3
1984 30.40 1.44 51.00 43.00 63.90 166.00 24.85 0
1985 30.50 1.44 48.50 44.50 90.00? 169.00 25.85 26.1
1986 31.00 1.40 47.88 44.11 89.77 168.80 25.59 0
1987 31.00 1.35 48.80 47.10 91.92 166.57 25.00 0
1988 92.21? 4.00? 92.85? 100.00? 91.92 166.98 56.30? 192.11
1989 92.21 4.00 92.85 100.00 91.92 169.97 58.08 0
1990 92.00 4.00 93.00 100.00 95.00 258.00?? 59.00 88.3
TOTALS: Declared Reserves for above Nations (1990) = 701.00 Gb - Spurious Claims = 317.54 Gb
data from Dr. Colin Campbell, in SunWorld, 1995 (click here for references)
In the above table, the red boldface numbers are considered spurious reserve claims. Also curious are the instances of reserves remaining identical over a period of years, despite intensive production. It can be seen that fully 45% of all the above reserve claims are questionable - even neglecting repeatedly unchanged reserve data.
hubbertpeak.com
Shell Report Exposes Lies on Oil Reserves
by Beth Gardiner
LONDON - A top executive of Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos. wrote in an e-mail that he was "sick and tired about lying" about the company's inflated oil and gas reserves estimates, an investigation commissioned by Shell reported Monday.
The investigation, whose findings Shell accepted in full, found that some bosses knew for almost two years the company had publicly overstated the size of its reserves. The shaken oil giant also announced that its chief financial officer had stepped down, the latest in a string of high-level casualties since Shell's announcement in January that its confirmed oil and gas holdings were much smaller than it had claimed.
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