economic

The world’s oil reserves have been exaggerated by about  33%, according to Sir David King, the UK Government’s former chief scientist, who warns of shortages and price spikes within years. 2014 is the likely year he says when demand exceeds new supply.

King and a research team from Oxford University say it is an open secret that OPEC is likely to have inflated its reserves, but that the International Energy Agency (IEA), BP, the Energy Information Administration and World Oil do not take this into account in their statistics. Their new research argues that estimates of conventional reserves should be downgraded from 1,150bn to 1,350bn barrels to between 850bn and 900bn barrels and claims that demand may outstrip supply as early as 2014.

The paper also raises concerns that public statistics have started to incorporate non-conventional reserves