In the absence of replenishment by successful exploration or reserves growth, so-called 'reserves replacement', proved reserves would tend to decline over time as production depleted the existing reserve base. However, the tendency has been for proved reserves at the aggregate level to increase over time as reported discoveries, extensions and improved recovery have exceeded production.
Global oil reserves rose by 6.6 billion bbls to 1,383 billion bbls in 2010. That represents an increase of 25% over the 2000 figure of 1,105 billion bbls, despite an estimated cumulative production of 318 billion bbls during the intervening ten years. Thus global reserves additions amounted to around 596 billion bbls between 2000 and 2010. _BP Statistical Review of World Energy
As oil prices continue to trend higher, more resources will be devoted to exploration, discovery, and production of new reserves. In addition, more work will continue to be put toward substitution of alternative synthetic liquid fuels in place of conventional petro-fuels.
Something that peak oil doomers need to ask themselves: "If oil production hasn't crashed under the Obama energy starvation regime, under the lax maintenance and production regimes of Russian, Venezuelan, and Iranian national oil companies, and under the general incompetence and corruption of state oil companies around the world -- what will it take to crash global oil production far enough to bring about the collapse?"
The world is floating in hydrocarbons of all kinds. The only shortages in the human world are the shortages of human ingenuity and human will.
By. Al Fin
