Rockman, I second the thanks for your insights.

I'm sure you yourself don't necessarily have a need to rely on such expositions, but another set of insights into the global reserves situation that I have found useful were the commentaries by a self-described subsurface professional, based on the IHS database. These are available at InvestorVillage Clayton Williams Energy. I've asked about this once before on TOD, but I haven't yet been able to locate the writer's posts on Russia's oil reserves. Wonder if you or some other reader might perchance know.

The posts I have already read are as follows:

Investor Village CWEI. Message #56151 is a summary of OPEC field-by-field reserve data with his proposed corrections - and numbered references to thirteen other posts on single OPEC countries. Messages #71577 and #74013 review data for world's top 50 gas fields ranked by claimed reserve size. Message #74021 mentions that he had done a similar review of the Russian oil data.