They are not 'bad apples' as far as I can tell. Their motivations and training were 'appropriate' for economic growth conditions of previous generation - starting a few years ago (as much as a decade ago) the game began to have different (ecology/sociology as opposed to economic based) rules. Post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning reined when world economy was growing using high energy profit ratio to suppress necessity of lateral thinking, and that business would always parse the right decisions. The rules have permanently changed now and CERA/IHS methodology will in time prove to be too narrow in scope (to many it already has). This has happened often in history. These are not bad people - just outdated boundaries.

As the article noted, if CERA is that wrong about a province as transparent as the North Sea, why would we expect them to be any better regarding more difficult to evaluate areas?

However, the overall North Sea decline is proceeding exactly as the logistic (HL) model would have suggested (in 1999, the North Sea was about 50% depleted, based on HL, EIA C+C).

And Saudi Arabia is going to show three years of annual production below their 2005 production rate at about the same stage of depletion at which the prior swing producer, Texas, peaked (again based on HL).

Regarding CERA's motivation, I suspect that they are paid to generate optimistic production scenarios, so they generate optimistic production scenarios--in much the same way that the nice ladies working at the Bunny Ranch in Nevada are paid to provide a service.

I do think that the pronouncements by ExxonMobil, CERA, and OPEC that Peak Oil is decades away are doing a lot of damage to ordinary people--by encouraging them, in effect, to "Party On," by maintaining their auto-centric suburban way of life.

In any case, judge for yourself. If you had to put your money on CERA or the logistic model, which one would you pick?

North Sea & Texas plots:

http://www.theoildrum.com/files/TexasAndNorthSea.png

I had detailed "discussions" with rockdoc123 a few years ago. I argued quite a bit with him over reserve growth. I learned a bit but he is gung-ho about drilling. For one he liked the idea about global warming as it will open up spots in the Arctic for oil exploration. Oh no :0

Overall though, like many of the geologists, they have a pretty thick skin and they get over insults.