interesting topic, but rest assured, gentlemen, there are more oil/gas reserves left untouched than you could possibly imagine.

i'm a stimulation engineer for the leading oil technology company on the planet. we and a few other companies are the only ones who have access to the reservoir data (proven and unexplored) for all the major gas producers. sharing that information with other companies or any group interested in determining what's left would hurt their ability to maximize profit.

it's kinda like how apple slowy releases bigger and better ipods to maximize profit.

so don't pay much attention to those estimates of remaining reserves, because they're only for PROVEN production reservoirs, meaning what's already been drilled and confirmed. that only makes up a small fraction of known reservoirs and, of course, does not taken into account undiscovered reservoirs.