Proven reserves may decline 2.8 percent to 13.9 billion barrels this year, Vinicio Suro, director of planning at Pemex’s exploration and production unit, said in a presentation on the company’s Web site. Reserves may rebound in 2013, he said.

But in 2008, the agency didn’t include unconventional gas – that is, gas from shale, tight sands, and coalbed methane -- in its estimate of recoverable gas resources. The IEA’s latest report provides further proof that the shale gas revolution necessitates a re-thinking of our approach to natural gas, and therefore, energy policy.

The World Energy Outlook (WEO) compiled each year by the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) is an eagerly sought after annual affair. The precious database compiled by the OECD energy watchdog is regarded -- and indeed correctly too -- as a guide post to industry trends.

The valley was created by glaciers and over time filled with loose rock gradually disappearing from the landscape. "

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

A possible oversupply of oil products in the local market once expensive exploration, production and refining initiatives are up and running could make ethanol, biodiesel and hydroelectricity less competitive.

Proved reserves are those volumes that geological and engineering data demonstrate with reasonable certainty to be recoverable from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions. Under Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules in effect since 1982, operators assessed their 2008 proved reserves based on the market price on the last day of the year.

While it’s no doubt that the decay of dead animals and plants is one pathway to the creation of Earth’s oil and natural gas deposits (potentially the largest), new research done with high-tech equipment simulating the conditions of deep earth suggests that Mendeelev’s theory is correct.

Their study is scheduled for Nov./Dec. issue of ACS' Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly publication. Anurag Sharma and colleagues note that the traditional process involves biology: Prehistoric plants died and changed into oil and gas while sandwiched between layers of rock in the hot, high-pressure environment deep below Earth's surface. Some scientists, however, believe that oil and gas originated in other ways, including chemical reactions between carbon dioxide and hydrogen below Earth' surface. "

The region around Shreveport has known oil and gas exploration for decades, but it's now buzzing anew as companies try to capitalize on one simple fact — locked into cement-like shale formations thousands of feet underground are potentially huge quantities of natural gas.

Matt Simmons has said a few times this year that he doesn’t see evidence that the big shale plays such as Barnett are actually providing big increases in natural gas production, despite the number of wells being sunk. He also pointed to the environmental problems with the hydraulic fracturing used to extract shale gas.

So far in this series of technical talks, I have tried to explain some of the pieces that have to be put together to get crude oil or natural gas out of the ground. I intend to go on with the series in the coming weeks, but thought that today I would put some of the different thoughts that I have talked about recently together. So I am going to talk a little about reserve calculations and production and will use an example to show how the numbers are derived. And again, let me stress that this is a very simplified example. It is also only somewhat fictionalized, as I shall comment at the end. "

At the end of the first day of the ASPO conference in Denver, we were treated to a fantastic presentation on the oil potential of the sub-salt basins on the margins of the South Atlantic Ocean given by Dr Marcio Mello who presented the evidence for a half trillion barrels of reserves in this new frontier province. So has a new Saudi Arabia been found?"

Eventually, production exhausts the field's natural pressure. Then the engineers begin to replace the natural pressure by pumping water or natural gas into the field. That allows the companies to recover 20% to 40% of the oil left in the field. But it also means 60% to 80% of that oil remains trapped underground in so-called "depleted" fields.

The report, a review of over 500 studies, analysis of industry databases and comparison of global supply forecasts, seeks to bring some clarity to this debate.