Is this just another scary scenario being issued in advance of the Sustainable Development jamboree?
This is particularly true of the OPEC countries where production quotas are based on the countres' claims of their proven reserves. Many people are suspicious of these numbers. See here:
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/summary.htm#suspect
It appears that total discovery in 2001 was about 8 Gb including deepwater oil, and NGL. Although there remain the eternal uncertainties about the reliability of the data, it appears that the world’s oil account has been running a deficit since 1981, as it continues to eat into its inheritance from past discovery. This downward discovery trend was evidently not affected by the tax-driven surge of exploration drilling in the early 1980s, underlining that discovery depends on geology not economic incentive. Apart from two sizeable finds, the 8 Gb of 2001 came from some 300 discoveries whose average size must accordingly be approaching the lower limit of viability. It explains the continued fall in exploration drilling, as modern technology allows the companies to accurately map the size of prospects, enabling them to concentrate on the shortening list of viable opportunities. These results from the real world are compatible with the consensus estimate of the size of the endowment, discussed above, and confirm the thoroughly flawed nature of the USGS report of 2000 that has misled so many governments and international agencies. The USGS claimed (as a Mean probability estimate) that 732 Gb would be found between 1995 and 2025, which means an average of 25 Gb a year. In fact, the average has been only 10 Gb during the first seven years of the study period, when discoveries should be above average as the larger fields are normally found first.
source: http://www.hubbertpeak.com/aspo/Newsletter16.doc