Re: Does the same apply to oil?
The reason for the speculation that OPEC reserve estimates are inflated is because OPEC allocates each country's percentage of production based on their percentage of OPEC's overall reserves. Yes, you read that right. So if there were 1000 barrels of reserves in OPEC and your country has 100 of them, and it produces 20 barrels a year, your country's quota is 2 barrels. If you "discover" you have 200 barrels instead of 100, you now have 2/11th of OPEC's reserves instead of 1/10th and are entitled to a production quota of 2/11th of OPEC's production!
So OPEC's reserves may not be using the same careful qualification as Tim details here, but with oil too there are resources not reserves. The Saudis know of other oil fields they haven't done anything with, because they don't need them now. In the US, shale was a "known unknown" (or is that "unknown known") back in the day - they knew we had it but didn't know how to produce it cost effectively until fracking was invented and the price went up high enough that fracking became economic.
I remember reading something about all the shale oil a few decades ago and the idea back then was they could cook it out of the ground somehow but that method required more than one barrel of oil to produce a barrel so that method was clearly non-viable.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
