Oil, oil everywhere? Well, just maybe

An English industry insider says we’ve grossly underestimated our reserves. Could he be right?

Ask him about oil, and Dr. Richard Pike has a rather sunny outlook. Oil and gas, he says confidently, will be around well into the next century.

Pike can maintain his optimism because he knows something no one else knows. He believes that a simple mathematical error

It’s an error that oil companies, riding high on skyrocketing crude prices, may want you to believe.

“This might be hard for some of your readers to take,” he warns. With oil at $132 a barrel yesterday, tensions over gas prices are at a boiling point. But listen, he says: at 1.2 trillion barrels, we have grossly underestimated the world’s proven oil reserves. If he’s right, we likely have double the amount of recoverable oil that we think we have in the ground, or perhaps even more.

The argument is attracting attention at a time when many governments are looking for new sources of oil; U.S. President George W. Bush reversed his long-held position against offshore drilling this week.

Toronto Star