(Perhaps as in  . . .before the storm?)
The tables that Jean Laherrerre used for the amount of reserves that Saudi Arabia has, was, in his paper, drawn from two sources.  In an earlier post on those numbers, I cited only the IHS data from the table that he had published.  The other source is Wood Mackenzie (WM) and in an article yesterday in Rigzone it is noted that WM is seeing that the incentives for new exploration may outweigh that of buying other oil companies.

A study by oil consultants Wood Mackenzie has modelled the effect of oil prices on the profitability of exploration. Assuming they could sell the oil they have discovered for $40 a barrel, the best explorers would have made returns of more than 20 percent on every dollar they have ploughed into finding new oil supplies over the past 10 years.

Even the worst performers out of the 28 top international oil firms surveyed would have made a 12 percent return.

Although WM suggest that the industry will have to spend $40 bn to find enough oil to replace that which is being produced.  Of course this gets us back to the question as to whether, even if they spent that money, would they actually be successful in finding that much oil.  Certainly the fact that companies are not making those investments might be an indication that they, themselves, might not think it feasible.