It was my “go to” place to find out what was going on during the BP well leak. That and BP’s live robot feeds.

Current reserves are hard to estimate, as the reporting of same are inconsistant, or out-right lies. Many OPEC members report the same number of barrels every year, for decades now. Odd, that.

Recoverable resources are always in doubt. You don’t really know until you’ve stuck in the straw.

Undiscovered resources are, as I have said, an arm-wave. Usually these are taken as the total amount of sedimentary rocks in a basin, applying an average based on potental source rocks and reservoir rocks, and throwing a number out.

Don’t trust me for an order of magnitude estimate. Geology can get sloppy with decimals.

How long have we got? Beats me, too many damn variables. My opinion is that we are at peak oil, but it will be a plateau as opposed to a peak. That’s the production curve. The discovery curve is not significantly increasing, as far as I know. That’s a caveat, those with more time to get the latest data are asked to do so. As I recall, the number of drill rigs is going up, but the discoveries are not going up at the same rate. As you know, the area under the discovery curve (total oil discovered) is all that can be produced. A flat-topped production curve might just predict a rather steep escarpment on the other side of the mesa.

Sorry I have to join those Texas oilmen in giving you a non-answer, ER. In my own opinion, after decades of semi-professional interest in the matter, we are on the back-side of the petroleum interval. The decline of oil will last decades, probably faster than the ascent. Hopefully that will allow the developement of other energy sources, and will, as the economics shift towards conservation and alternatives.

However, before that happens, every last opportunity will be drilled: offshore, wildlife refuge, sensitive ecosytem, deep-sea, if it might have oil, it will have a straw stuck in it, sooner or later. And it will not slake our thirst.

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is there any reliable information, or even a half-decent ball park estimate, on how much oil there is left in the world?

I understand that we know where some oil is and how much it will cost to extract. (Reserves)

I also know we have some idea where there is more oil available, that will be extractable if prices go up, or technology improves. (Recoverable)

And there is probably some oil out there just waiting to be found but we have no idea where it is and no way to guess…yet. (Undiscovered)

When I worked at Gulf Research Labs in the early 1980s none of the Texas cowboys there could (or would) answer that question. They either gave totally contradictory answers, or they changed the subject. Does anyone really know? And if they know, are they talking? Are there even trustworthy guesses by people who don’t have axes to grind?

If they’re all lying, I trust you could probably give at least an order-of-magnitude estimate, broken down by those 3 categories.

How much time have we got?

When the Norwegians and Brits were pumping North Sea oil, their prices didn’t drop, when the North Slope was pumping, our prices didn’t drop.

Private enterprise takes big financial risks to explore for and produce oil, when they do find it they are going to charge whatever the market will bear. I’ll concede there are valid business justifications for keeping prices high, but the Democrat(sic) Party is not one of them.

The price of oil is determined by what the world is willing to pay for it, not where it came out of the ground.

Average driver uses 700 gallons per year. The cost of shipping oil from overseas amounts to about 3¢ per gallon equals a cost of $21 dollars annually. The cost of shipping goes up with an increase in the cost of oil

It may not seem like much but every one ¢ rise in the price of gas takes 1.4 billion out of the hands of consumers so shipping cost of oil is 4.2 billion at the current price of oil.

Here’s the kicker, these consumption numbers don’t include the prices of diesel which as you know is passed on in the price of goods. Nor do they include the price of Jet A. Have you seen what is happening to the price of Airline tickets? It also doesn’t include fuel costs associated with the importation of goods.

So where it comes from does make some difference in price. I don’t think it’s an insignificant amount.

EDIT: I guess you would have to consider how domestic drilling would effect the percentage of imported oil which would make the impact of freight less than the numbers above. Too lazy to work through it again.

You know, there are actual SEC rules that define the use of the word in investment reports.

In my world, we have arguements on when and how you can use this word. Because we can be held responsible for using it incorrectly.

“Technically recoverable” usually means “at higher prices.”

Forget oil shale. The water needed to process it doesn’t exist in the semi-arid west. Really, it’s not a resource that can be processed economically, so it is not a reserve.

Undiscovered resources is an arm-wave, at best, a term used by the worst of resource investment salesmen. Former used-car dealers, usually.

Also, with all the hubuzz about global warming and diminishing oil supplies, shouldn’t he be promoting clean energy? One thing I never understood is why most oil, coal, and natural gas companies are so opposed to it. If they leapt right on the clean energy bandwagon, they could be the ones making the profits there.

As for the strategic reserves, I agree with you on that issue. See my comments to your post on CE.

You can judge the sources of the sublinks yourself.

Then there’s this theory:

A) Drilling new oil out of the ground will not reduce oil or gasoline prices.

B) Pulling old oil out of the strategic reserve will.

All dots. No connections.

I used to work for the Energy Industry, remember? I know exactly how both sides spin it, depending on what they want to prove. When I was selling nukes in the 70s, I had plenty of “evidence” showing how oil and coal were about to run out and nuclear was our only way out. (I also had a rap on “so-called toxic nuclear waste” that would make you want to rush out and buy futures in it).

One thing is sure, it is very difficult to find exactly how tall that energy pyramid is, and where those 3 slices in it are, and how practical they actually are as a true resource. The only ones who really know are the oil companies, and they’re not talking. I used to work for one of them, too.

The really big lie is that finding large amounts of unexpected oil in the US is suddenly going to make the price of energy come down–not while other countries are allowed to bid for it. The price of oil is determined by what the world is willing to pay for it, not where it came out of the ground. The oil companies aren’t going to sell oil cheap here and expensive overseas because they are so patriotic.

Unless, of course, you nationalize the oil companies. Then, all those reserves the Republicans are always bleating about can be sold domestically at the cost of production.

Now if THAT were the case, I’d be the first one to be yelling “drill here, baby!”.