Dr. Roger W. Bentley

This is the third and final part in a series of comments on Professor Peter Odell’s article that appeared in the UK newspaper The Guardian on February 15th, itself a response to an article in the same newspaper by Dr. Jeremy Leggett on February 5th.

Last week in the ODAC Newsletter I presented four background reasons why Professor Odell could write what he did in response to the article ‘The great fuel folly’ by Jeremy Leggett (The Guardian, February 15th and 5th 2008, respectively). The main reason was the existence of two very different data sets for how much oil the world has discovered – the oil industry’s proved and probable (‘2P’) data, and the very misleading proved reserves (‘1P’) data to which Odell has access. (See below for why 1P data can be so treacherous)…