The necessity of extending the world s oil resource base to include nonconventional reserves has already been stressed. The initial hurdle in this respect has, however, recently been already overcome by the Canadian decision to declare as proven 178 billion barrels of such oil in Alberta ( Oil and Gas Journal, 2003b). Figures 3.4 and 3.5 show how the share of non-conventional oil will rise slowly in the first two decades of the 21st century but, thereafter, will more emphatically contribute to the global supply of oil. As shown in the Figures, this contribution will have risen to over 50% when global oil production is predicated to peak in 2060; and thereafter to account for almost 90% of total supply by 2100. The anticipated medium-term progress of this new development has been described above. Its long-term implications require deeper analysis.

Beyond this critical development for expanding oil supplies, there lies an even more fundamental issue for oil s future prospects, viz. the validity of the view still overwhelmingly accepted in the West of an organic origin of oil and thus for its occurrence within quite narrowly defined areas of the earth s surface. It is from this restrictive hypothesis of the derivation of the world s oil that most estimates to date of the oil resources base have been made (but see Styrikovich, 1977; Krylov, 1997 for alternative views on oil resources). There is, moreover, a contrary view on the prospects for oil arising from the Russian- Ukrainian theory of...