Special thanks to Trudeaupia’s entry for setting me on to J Simon’s works, including this chapter in particular.

“Known reserves” are much like the food we put into our cupboards at home.  We stock enough groceries for a few weeks or days – not so much that we will be carrying a heavy unneeded inventory that bulges the cupboard and ties up an unnecessary amount of money in groceries, and not so little that we may run out if an unexpected event – a guest or a blizzard – should descend upon us. The amount of food in our cupboards tells little or nothing about the scarcity of food in our communities, because as a rule it does not reveal how much food is available in the retail stores. Similarly, the oil in the “cupboard” – the quantity of known reserves – tells us nothing about the quantities of

oil that can be obtained in the long run at various extraction costs.

This explains why the quantity of known reserves, as if by a miracle of coincidence, stays just a step ahead of demand, as seen in figure 11-5. An elderly man commented to me in the 1970s that, according to the news stories about known reserves, “we’ve been just about to run out of oil ever since I’ve been a boy.” Yet most discussions of the oil and energy situation – among laymen and also among the most respected journalists – still focus on known reserves.