Whistleblowers Say Oil Reserve Numbers Deliberately Inflated to Avoid Panic, Appease the US

Apparently the IEA was concerned that reporting the true reserve numbers would trigger a buying panic.

World oil reserves are far lower than officially reported, the situation far more serious than publicly admitted, and we're already past peak oil. That's the word from two anonymous IEA whistleblowers, The Guardian reports. To add insult to industry, the figures were deliberately massaged, at least in part, to appease the United States:

Apparently the IEA was concerned that reporting the true reserve numbers -- and keep in mind that determining oil reserves is as much art as science -- it would trigger a buying panic.

The US enters the picture encouraging the IEA to underplay the rate at which oil fields are being depleted -- something which the IEA has admitted in recent months is occurring more quickly than previously acknowledged -- while at the same time overplaying the possibility of new large discoveries.

Indeed, when one does the math on how much recent new oil finds, touted as 'huge', actually add to world reserves, the result is usually in days or weeks of additional world supply, not months, still less years. read more here