It is, in part, these politico-economic components in the evolution of the prospectivity of world oil that are significant in undermining the validity of the renewed efforts by some to claim that another oil supply crisis is pending (Campbell, 1997 and 2003; Campbell and Laherr re, 1998; Laherr re, 1997 and 2003). Once again, as with their predecessors such as Warman (1972) and Hols (1972) in the 1970s, their forecasts of a near-future peak in global oil production (by 2005/6) fail to recognise the dynamics of the processes whereby oil reserves and production evolve: and they equally avoid the central role played by both economics and politics in equilibriating the markets (Lynch, 1997). Such irrational warnings of an early 21st century oil scarcity should thus be ignored, particularly as one recalls the huge costs that were imposed on the world economy by the earlier acceptance by many energy and economic policymakers of the 1970s prognostications of oil scarcity (Adelman, 1993; Odell, 2001). That episode was responsible in large part not only for the much higher oil prices and the economic and social problems that these caused, but also for the very large non-viable investments that were made in alternative energy production systems and in the exploitation of higher cost energy reserves (McCabe, 1998; Odell, 1998). The world at the present time can ill afford an unnecessary repetition of that near disastrous set of events.

The world s already proven reserves of oil and the processes whereby they evolve ...