World's oil reserves might be much larger than estimated

William Atkins
Saturday, 21 June 2008 21:40

Science - Energy

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Dr. Pike is the chief executive officer (CEO) of the United Kingdom-based organization the Royal Society of Chemistry, a leading organization in Europe in the chemical sciences.

The minimum amount of oil present in all of the Earth’s known oil fields and the amount that can be extracted from these known oil fields using today’s current technology is given the name “world proven oil reserves.”

This amount is considered an underestimation by Dr. Pike because of the way oil companies statistically estimate the amount of their own oil fields.

Pike suggests that this amount of proven reserves is probably about half of what can ultimately be recovered from these known oil reserves.

In 1995, the World Resources Institute (WRI) estimated that the world proven oil reserve was 1 trillion (or 1,000 billion) barrels. They assumed twice that amount actually exists in all known oil fields. Thus, about 2 trillion, or 2,000 billion, barrels of oil is recoverable and useable.

Today, the amount of proven oil reserves is based on 1997 figures by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the World Petroleum Council.

In 2007, these 1997 figures were re-defined using a more advanced system of reporting. It basically uses the 1997 system of proven oil reserves and adds "contingent resources" (potentially recoverable from discovered sites) and "prospective resources" (potentially recoverable from undiscovered sites). [Society of Petroleum Engineers: “Petroleum Resources Management System”]

Today, the proven oil reserves number is estimated at 1.2 trillion (1,200 billion) barrels of oil. Dr. Pike contends that this amount could be actually over twice that amount, or over 2.4 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves.

Dr. Pike says to use a different method to more accurately estimate world proven oil reserve. Please read on.