Why is OPEC lying?
We know they know we know they are lying
Can fiction masquerade itself as fact? Well, there's a case study at hand - OPEC and its reserves. OPEC's crude oil reserves grew by almost 7.9 percent in 2008 - from 940 barrels in 2007 to 952 billion barrels. This is attributed to the “reassessment” of proven crude reserves of a member country Venezuela. Why, then, is there scepticism on this news?
by Andrew Costin
OPEC, since the 80's, began determining production quotas based on the proven oil reserves of its member countries. And, in the same decade there were ridiculously large leaps in numbers: in 1983, Kuwait increased its reserves from 76 billion barrels to 92 billion barrels. Come 1987, Iraq's reserves went from 47 billion barrels to 100 billion barrels, Iran's reserves soared from 49 to 93 barrels, and the UAE oil reserves tripled from 31 billion barrels to 92 billion barrels in 85-86. Suspiciously, all the countries had either discovered new oil fields or their existing fields began producing more.
In 2006, PIW (Petroleum Intelligence Weekly) broke the news, in a leaked memo from the Kuwait Oil company (KOC) that Kuwait's proven reserves were only half of the reported figures. In the same year, Dr. Samsam Bakhtiari, then a senior expert of the (NIOC) National Iranian Oil Company, said that the oil reserves in the Middle-East were “about half, or even less than what the respective national governments claim”. So, all the bloated oil reserve claims look closer to fiction which throws another question, why does OPEC lie?
