"QrizB" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 07:51:17 +0000, Austin Shackles
wrote:

Mind, when I was young (1970s), people were confidently predicting that
the
oil was going to run out in about 2020. don't hear that figure any more,
so
I assume they've found some more since then.

I was doing my A-levels in the, er, mid-80s. As a summer project I
chose a project on oil reserves, and confidently came to the
conclusion that known reserves would last to about 1998 at the
consumption rates of the time.

I reckon your assumption is OK.

But you were right. There is always about a 10 year rolling window of oil
reserves. There is currently enough known oil to last until something like
2013. But it's the stuff we don't know about, which we will find in the
next ten years, which will get us to 2023, and so on. It won't go on
forever, but neither will it run out in the foreseeable.

There is also a continuous technology development which also allows us to
get better yield from older fields which were previously uneconomical.

David (ex-geologist, married to a geophysicist)