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<blockquote data-quote="SoonerP226" data-source="post: 3262988" data-attributes="member: 26737">There are other factors involved in that. It has been a loooong time since I took economic geography, but there were (and may still be) tax schemes in some states that tax companies on their proven reserves (I want to say the case study was mining, but it could&#039;ve been oil&amp;gas or coal) over the next X years. As a result, the companies would only have proven reserves for the next X years, then a year (or two) later, they would &quot;discover&quot; more of the resources to extend out to the next X years, but no further. They basically had no incentive to fully explore the deposits, and a pretty strong one to only explore enough of it to satisfy the tax man.That, FWIW, was how I knew the predictions of &quot;peak oil&quot; were 99 and 44/100ths percent pure BS (well, that and understanding the concept of marginal wells). I didn&#039;t understand it at the time, but my Econ geography prof was right--the difference between natural resources and economic resources is that natural resources are finite.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="SoonerP226, post: 3262988, member: 26737"] There are other factors involved in that. It has been a loooong time since I took economic geography, but there were (and may still be) tax schemes in some states that tax companies on their proven reserves (I want to say the case study was mining, but it could've been oil&gas or coal) over the next X years. As a result, the companies would only have proven reserves for the next X years, then a year (or two) later, they would "discover" more of the resources to extend out to the next X years, but no further. They basically had no incentive to fully explore the deposits, and a pretty strong one to only explore enough of it to satisfy the tax man. That, FWIW, was how I knew the predictions of "peak oil" were 99 and 44/100ths percent pure BS (well, that and understanding the concept of marginal wells). I didn't understand it at the time, but my Econ geography prof was right--the difference between natural resources and economic resources is that natural resources are finite. [/QUOTE]

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