Curiously, this is the situation with some of the world’s biggest oil producers. Despite having pumped out billions of barrels of the stuff over the last thirty years the Middle East OPEC members now have nearly 85% more than in 1984. For example, the biggest producer, Saudi Arabia's figure ballooned from 171 billion barrels in the eighties to 264 at the turn of the century and hasn't dipped in the last decade.
How is the possible? Oil is not a renewable resource, with what we use in one year taking at least a million years to reform. Surely it is impossible for these reserves to have grown?
The producers argue it is due to better measuring and improved surveying techniques, that they never really knew how much was down there. Another aspect is the evaluation of possible reserves and reclassifying them as proven.
Middle East OPEC Oil Reserves (thousand million
barrels)
1984
|
2006
|
2007
|
2008
|
2009
|
2010
|
2011
|
Change
11/84
(%)
|
|
IR Iran
|
58.9
|
138. 4
|
136. 2
|
137.6
|
137.0
|
151.2
|
154.6
|
162.5
|
Iraq
|
65.0
|
115.0
|
115.0
|
115.0
|
115.0
|
143.1
|
141.4
|
117.5
|
Kuwait
|
92.7
|
101.5
|
101.5
|
101.5
|
101.5
|
101.5
|
101.5
|
9.5
|
Qatar
|
4.5
|
26.2
|
25.1
|
25.4
|
25.4
|
25.4
|
25.4
|
464.4
|
Saudi Arabia
|
171.7
|
264. 3
|
264.2
|
264.1
|
264.5
|
264.5
|
265.4
|
54.6
|
UAE
|
32.5
|
97.8
|
97.8
|
97.8
|
97.8
|
97.8
|
97.8
|
200.9
|
Total
|
425.3
|
478.9
|
739.8
|
741.4
|
741.2
|
783.5
|
786.1
|
84.8
|
But there is the also policital pressure to have big reserves. OPEC production quotas are based on reserve size, so the bigger the figure, the more a country can pump and the more revenue it can make.
Of course, if this data was inaccurate and the reserves were actually half the size of those claimed, someone would have spotted it. Some oil specialist would have checked the measurements.
However all these figures are state secrets and not open to scrutiny. Nationalised oil firms control the measuring and reporting. So even though many industry experts have criticised the data the official numbers stay. The unshrinking oil fields carry on pumping out their magic flows.
Until sometime in the next few years the taps turn off and we finally get the truth.