Technology is another element comprising the happy talk about the world’s inehxhaustibly abundant oil supplies. As with Saudi Arabia (and other nations’) reserves, the reality is quite different from what is commonly presented. The argument is that oil reserves calculus changed in the last decades as drilling technologies iproved. That, in part, is how the mushrooming oil reserves numbers are justified even in absence of large new oil field discoveries. Unfortunately, experience hasn’t borne out this optimism and the idea that drilling technologies may have turned Saudi Arabia’s 110 billion barrels of proven reserves into 790 billion barrels is unrealistic, to put it politely. Continue reading →