Reserve Growth Reloaded

After excessive consternation on my part and then realizing that I have at various times considered reserve growth both overrated and significant, this PDF presentation suggests a middle ground.

While global reserve growth shows an apparently self-limiting growth of 3x, well below Attanasi and Root's estimate for USA reserve growth of upwards of 10x, that still doesn't tell the whole story. For one, it all depends on when the reserve growth counter officially starts ticking. In the case of Russia, it appears the ticker only starts after 5-7 years have elapsed, potentially pushing the reserve growth to only 2x.

For another example, reserve growth in the UK North Sea and Norway appears even lower, hovering near the 1.3X level, or only about a 30% increase after a signal to go ahead with development (implying a long fallow stage).

Further, note how in the Norway example that the delay prior to development approval serves to effectively stabilize the estimates. Estimates prior to year 0 actually show an average reserve decrease initially.