Alternatively, I could have called this story "Back to Basics, What I Learned at ASPO USA, Part I".

To convince us all that peak oil is not just on the horizon, the IEA speaks of huge proven or potential reserve numbers or, even worse, undiscovered resources that will soon become producible reserves. In his ASPO USA talk, Matt Simmons (ppt) called this reserve appreciation and sarcastically referred to these as "conceptual reserves". As Chris Skrebowski (ppt) pointed out (Slide 8), what is relevant to peak oil is not reserves but diminishing incremental flows. The history of Kuwaiti reserve numbers and the recent revelation that the Greater Burgan field, the world's second largest in terms of reserves, is now "exhausted", make these distinctions clear.