Experts fuel debate over oil reserves

By Karen Carstens

Date: 03/06/04

STATISTICS on global oil reserves must be taken with a grain of salt, as it is difficult to pinpoint when the 'peak' of consumption has been reached, scientists have warned.

"There is a total lack of transparency," said Hilmar Rempel, of the Hanover-based Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe, an institute for geological sciences that advises the German government and businesses.

Speaking after a conference that drew more than 200 international oil experts last week in Berlin, he said oil- producing countries use different standards to determine their reserves. And statistics found in the Oil and Gas Journal, used by most experts, were often questionable.

"The reserves of some countries have not changed for years in these statistics," he said. "That is just not possible."

Experts at the third conference convened by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO) to discuss when global oil and gas stocks will peak before they begin to plummet could not agree.

ASPO founder Colin Campbell, a geologist who formerly worked for oil giants, claimed the peak would be reached by next year. But Jeffrey Johnson of Exxon predicted that oil reserves would last well beyond 2020, when up to 80% of global energy needs will still be covered by oil, gas and coal.

Renewables, he added, would only play a marginal role in the energy mix.

Yet Campbell claimed: "There is no alternative to alternative energies."

But according to Rempel, predicting any kind of peak remains tricky. "We could probably agree to a time corridor of between 2010 and 2030," he said.

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