Oil Firms Insist They Are Winning Reserves Battle

Major oil firms insist they are more than replacing energy reserves they extract with new resources even though U.S. regulatory accounting indicates they are failing to do so.

In the last three weeks, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total have all said they more than replaced the volume of hydrocarbons they drew out of the ground in 2004, according to their traditional accounting systems.

However, using reporting guidelines set by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, BP and Exxon say they fell far short of this target, while analysts say Total likely did the same.