Westtexas,

I saw the Enron documentary yesterday.  It's a Ten
by the way.  See it if you can.

Anyway the movie flashes the book Selfish Genes as a book Skilling runs his life by.

From the book or like minded authors-

We humans are blissfully unaware that we are driven to behave in ways that maximize inclusive fitness. Because of the advantages of unawareness of our own deceptive tactics and of our suspicion, I suggest that innate tendencies made us "embarrassingly stupid" as far as conscious awareness of these facts is concerned.

Evolutionary theory predicts the inherent selfishness of the individual. Therefore, we would not expect communication to develop as a means of informing others of the truth, if such truth gives the recipient an advantage at the expense of the sender. Cronk (1991) suggests to "follow the example of animal behavior studies in seeing communication more as a means to manipulate others than as a means to inform them". In other words, most communication serves for the purpose of social influence, defined as "change in one person's beliefs, attitudes, behavior, or emotions brought about by some other person or persons" (Raven, 1983, p. 8).

This demonstrates that deceit as an influence strategy is neither new nor a human invention. Second, it is likely that humans employ strategies as low as level two (body language signals of strength or submission) or maybe even level one (immature and baby-like facial features in an adult).

In summary, we should expect a good strategists to strive to maintain an image of being a truthful person. He or she should be prepared to deceive whenever it confers a sizable advantage versus a much smaller risk.

It's now obvious that the powers that be got away with the Enron model.  Lay and Skilling are big, but they ain't
Chase Morgan or CSFB.

The US has absolutely no intention of slowing "growth"
(the same def as Enron's-whatever we say it is).

We will continue until stopped.  By PO, Climate Change,  or nuking Iran.

Many thanks for your thoughts on this, westexas, mcgowanjm, zach. I need to preface my comments by saying: I expect decline rates to be significantly higher for many fields in future due to EOR use, I think that many reserves are a bit overstated, I think things are going to get worse and faster than many here seem to think. However...

I can believe that some large fields in mid east, like Ghawar, may reach perhaps 70% URR / OOIP so there could be more recoverable oil than you expect.

Though the water cut from Ghawar is about 35% now its rate of increase has been slow, steady and seemingly well managed, it was over 20% 25 years ago.

Russia is just weird, I don't think any relatively simple model will work for it. There could be anything from 50 to 100 billion barrels of URR remaining (80% probability range).

One thing we really need to know more about is how EOR has impacted production rates and decline rates for large fields. I think this will be absolutely critical in attempting to project forward, I too expect some seriously nasty decline rates.

More philosophically, I almost never lie, often manage to go several years without telling even the smallest white lie, one lie a year is a bad record for me. When I do choose to lie it usually causes me considerable trauma both before and after, I almost never lie by mistake since being untrue is now so alien to me. Yet I am very aware of people around me lying continuously, often without being aware they are doing so. Is it me that is sick or them?

I never liked "The Selfish Gene" book or thesis, it is well argued but doesn't ring true. I generally consider the 'common good' above personal benefit, if I could gain 15 at the cost of 10 each losing 2 then I would not do it. But I am very rarely ripped off and can be a very good bargainer and negotiator when needed. Maybe I am a communist who believes in personal freedom, lol.