Sadad al-Huseini’s presentation to the Oil and Money conference in London went substantially as previewed by lastoilshock.com, but the analysis he delivered may also throw light on the infamous OPEC reserve additions of the 1980s.


Mr al-Huseini began by noting the obvious inconvenient truth of the oil market of recent years: that production has barely increased despite a soaring crude price and massive investment by the industry. “It’s telling us something. We should be listening to what the numbers are telling us, not what the politicians say… It’s not about economics alone, you can increase prices, but you will not necessarily drive production up”

He also noted that 400 billion barrels of reserve replacement has been reported over the last decade, and asked why this had not been translated into new capacity. The answer, he suggested, was that a quarter of the world’s claimed proved reserves are no such thing: not production-ready oil, but speculative sources. “Reserves are confused and in fact inflated. Many of the so called reserves are in fact resources. They’re not delineated, they’re not acessible, they’re not available for production”. By his estimate 300 billion of the world’s 1200 barrels of proved reserves should be recategorized as speculative resources.

Mr al-Huseini did not specify which countries had inflated their reserves in this fashion, but the number is strikingly similar to the size of reserve additions recorded by OPEC members in the mid-1980s when countries were vying for quota share, although no new discoveries had been made.