Re: "the apparent overstaking of oil reserves" according to friends in the oil exploration biz the reserves as stated by shell were not exaggerated, but just did not conform to recently changed accounting rules that dictated the exact definition of confirmed reserves. I am told that the actual reserves are much higher than stated and that the oil companies and environmentalists have a vested interest in making oil seem to be in shorter supply than it actually is.
There are also interesting questions to be asked about whether this stuff is really made from old dinosaurs fish and plants as some would have is believe. It is now thought that wherever you drill in the world you will find oil, but in some places it is deeper than current technology allows us to get at. Many of those fields that were though to be depleted and abandoned decades ago, are now found to have been replenished. Maybe this is plate techtonics shifting the old dinosaur juice around from place to place within the Earth, but it still amazes me that lighter than water crude is found 4 kilometres below the seabed.
The rise in Asian oil usage is certainly going to be a important factor in the next decades, even if oil isn't as scarce as we have been led to believe. From a pollution aspect it could be devastating. China seems to have a policy of not drilling in quantity at any time in the near future, perhaps hoping that the rest of the world will run out and it will hold all the cards.
Shell could be a good buy right now, having gone out of favour because of the "overstated" reserves "scandal". They have rights to huge reserves in Nigeria that they are not allowed to officially class as confirmed due to accounting rules, and that is reserves they have actually measured with much of the swamps and offshore territory they have rights to remaining unexplored. If you think crude is due for a correction and the oil shares as a class could come down, then maybe long shell and short BP.
