What was born will die: sun, earth, mankind and civilisation. It is important to display natural events in order to show growth, peaks and decline. But finding reliable and complete databases is almost impossible. Publishing data is a political act and depends upon the image his author wants to give. Published data are mainly political or financial. Technical data are confidential except in UK, Norway and US federal lands. There are two different worlds: the political remaining reserves which increase since 1950 and the technical remaining reserves which decrease since 1980. Ambiguity is favoured. Terms are loosely defined to allow freedom to display what is wanted. Oil can represent in 2005 either regular oil for Campbell at 66 Mb/d or crude oil (plus some condensate) at 71 Mb/d or all liquids (including gas liquids, synthetic oils (even from coal and biomass) and refinery gains at 84 Mb/d.
Technical databases can be bought (very expensive) to scout companies, but they differ widely. It is necessary to correct all these sources in order to obtain worldwide homogeneous mean (expected value) backdated reserves. Creaming curves allow estimating ultimate reserves. Such data can be easily modelled with multi-logistic curves for cumulative discovery and production. Forecast is modelled for crude oil less extra-heavy oil with an ultimate of 2000 Gb and for all liquids for an ultimate of 3000 Gb. The oil peak from the supply will come around 2010-2015, but a bumpy plateau is likely if oil demand is constrained by an economic crisis (Volcker's forecast).
R/P is a very poor ratio to use for forecasting because it trends towards an asymptote of about 15-20 years.
Reserve growth comes for so-called proved reserves from bad reporting (omitting probable) and from bad aggregation.
Natural gas is forecasted in the same way and will peak for the world 10 years later than oil. But because the high cost of transport, there are three gas markets and shortage is coming for North America (rush on LNG terminals) and soon for Europe, which is counting too much on Russian overestimated reserves.
Coal production is also forecasted peaking around 2050.
Forecasts on primary energy are displayed, as the population in order to study consumption per capita. Energy per capita has been around 1.7 toe per capita for the last 25 years and will stay at this level for the next 25 years.
Half of the world population (with educated women) has a fertility rate below replacement and is going towards extinction. There are two worlds of different future: countries with low fertility rate and countries with high rates.
Oil price forecasts have been always wrong and I refuse to do any forecast outside that oil price will be chaotic for the next decade. The only change is that OPEC goal of 25 $/b which was in effect for the last 20 years is now increased to 50 $/b.
Energy intensity b/$ GDP is for me a poor parameter because GDP represents not wealth but manipulated expenditures. GDP is not at all related to happiness. GDP growth varies in parallel with oil production growth. For the last 40 years, world energy represents only 5% of the GDP when its contribution is estimated by experts to be about 50%. Energy is completely underestimated in our present world.
Politician and managers are judged on growth and decline is a politically incorrect term. All official forecasts are only political, based on an economic growth of 3%/a. But continuous growth is impossible in a limited world.
Agriculture depends completely upon oil and gas, but world cereals production flattens and stocks decrease. Agriculture cannot feed the world and its cars!
Climate change has been going since 4 billion years, shown clearly in geological outcrops by lithology changes. Temperature and CO2 has been varying widely for the last 600 millions years, and largely above the present values. Human emissions disturb the climate but it is on fourth order compared to Nature. The 2001 TAR IPCC report was based on 40 energy scenarios, which are unrealistic, and its conclusion is as unreliable as its hypothesis. The 2007 AR4 IPCC report will be based on the same bad scenarios: GIGO!
Conclusion: data are unreliable and will not improve as long as OPEC fight between their selves on quotas. We have reached the limits of the earth. Peaks of fossil fuels are coming and, because nuclear cannot fill the gap for the next 30 years (breeders are needed), the main solution is energy savings. We need to change our way of life based on cheap energy. Human will change their behaviour only if they are convinced that energy price will increase drastically for long. All who claims that peak oil is several decades away will be guilty if peak occurs soon because the world will be completely unprepared.
Catastrophism is allowed for climate, but not for energy. Why?

In early 2005, estimated global oil demand was forecast to reach 86 Mbl/d (millions barrels a day) or more by the end of the year, and demand increases had almost forecasts each year from 2002 to 2004. Development is now underway on a number of giant oilfields around the world (Kashagan, Gulf of Mexico, West Africa), but none of these projects is expected to produce in excess of 200-250 kbl/d.
The volume of water produced from the world's oil fields is now estimated to exceed 200 Mbl/d, nearly 3 times the volume of the oil. Oil wells in US produce more than 7 bls of water for each barrel of oil. The annual cost to US producers for disposing of this produced water is $ 5-10 G. Worldwide, the cost to handle superfluous water is estimated to be around $40 G. Sooner or later, the worldwide use of oil must peak, because oil, like the other two fossil fuels, coal and natural gas is non-renewable.
The chief natural laws, that is to say, (1) Inequality, (2) Self Similarity, (3) Fractal Distribution, (4) Cyclicity, (5) Finiteness, (6) Gravitation, (7) Life, (8) Determinism & Probabilism, (9) Symmetry (Central Limit Theorem) are briefly summarized and depicted. Applying the available data base (OPEC, OGJ, Petroconsultants, BP review, World Oil and USDOE/EIA), few general hypotheses related to HC exploration and production can be advanced: (a) publishing reserves is a political act, (b) field growth (reserves appreciation) corresponds mainly to bad practices of reserves reporting, (c) technological progress lead to faster and cheaper production, but has not much impact on conventional reserves revisions. Technological progress is needed for unconventional resources, (d) oil price increase will raise unconventional resources not yet listed as reserves, but it does not increase conventional reserves, (e) cheap oil will peak soon in North Sea and Non-OPEC countries, (f) for the world, it will peak around 2005, (g) Excluding the Eastern deep water of the South Atlantic margin, where large fields (± 500 Mb) are likely (subsalt plays unexplored), the future short term reserves are those that in past have been missed or have not take into account. These conjectures have been corroborated since 1990 (Cusiana, Lombo-East, Villeperdue, Peciko, Ben Berkine, etc.), (h) long term reserves will be chiefly associated with few foredeep basins and folded belts in which seismic data is whether impossible to acquire or useless (Papua New Guinea, Andes, Rocky Mountains, Ural Mountains, Assam, etc.), (i) future exploration requires a good data base and explorationists with an appropriate experience in all branches of exploration (examples of this type of exploration and suggestions for future international exploration are proposed).

The foreseeable depletion of fossil fuels and the subsequent spikes in the oil prices and its derivates has raised the interest in renewable energies throughout the world. Many world leaders and consultants are turning into alternative sources of energy and looking with increasing interest to energy vectors and storage systems. Several programs have been established to this effect in the main countries.
The case of Spain is remarkable, as it has placed in the wind energy systems as second to Germany in the world, with some 10 GW installed power and targeting to 20 GW within the last plans and fourth in the world in production and installed base in solar systems, among them, mainly photovoltaic and lately, also thermoelectric systems in Southern Spain.
Although the climate and the wind patterns are quite favourable in this country, there is no doubt that the regulatory system implemented by the Spanish Government has definitely helped to promote the implementation of these technologies.
Other renewable energies, like biomass and biofuels in its different varieties are also being promoted.
The question remains on whether these systems will be able to smoothly replace the growing gap left by the fossil fuels and also on the net energy yield, which is under discussion, as many of the manufacturing processes of renewable systems heavily rely on a fossil fuel world and could eventually suffer the bumpy road ahead.