George Bush nearly pelted with shoes

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Iraq has never had its oilfields mapped or quantified. There are huge areas of Iraq that have never been seismically tested. Since oil was first found in Iraq there have been less than 200 drills in various areas. To put that in perspective there have been well in excess of 20 million drilled in Texas.

As part of my job I get access to various economic data. As far as oil data goes the company with the most accurate name is a firm in Geneva called petroconsultants. Their reports change hands for over a million dollars a copy, and Petroconsultants' conservative estimate of Iraq's oil wealth based on the projected size of their known geological formations is $500 trillion. Certainly that's the figure that was in discussion in various meetings of financial institutions I attended on both sides of the Atlantic in 2002/3 before we invaded. Although it was never openly discussed from the various comments made it was clear that the participants at those meetings certainly seemed to think the war was all about oil. They were all people like me, who'd absorbed the distilled wisdom of 400 years of British/US mercantalism/imperialism/capitalism over decades working in the financial industry. And I can tell you that the firms they work for, their jobs, status, income etc. was built on us having done similar stuff for hundreds of years and depends today on the same thing. It's hard to overstate the importance of oil to the global economy or the existance of a country where there's huge potential to increase oil production -- only one such country exists. If I'd have stood up and claimed that i was worried about Saddam's WMD they would have looked at me like i had two heads.

OK, you are talking about figures that were in discussion. Can you provide some kind of reference, or industry organization website that supports your numbers? I have provided my sources, another sourse is something called the Oil and Gas Journal. The numbers I quoted were estimates of proven and unproven reserves. Unproven reserves would deal with unexplored areas. And you know what? Even allowing for error, 20 trillion is so far away from 500 trillion that something is very wrong somewhere.

Saudi arabia has at 267 billion barrels known reserves. Saudi Arabia has 1/5 of the worlds known reserves.

According to my calculations, your figures imply that Iraq's potential supply exceed total known reserves in the world by a factor of around 4x. Tell me where ny figures are wrong.

We are talking about whether or not the war is all about the economy of oil. I'd say that makes the value of oil under discussion relevant. If we can't come any closer than a factor of 25x then we our discussions won't mean a whole lot.

I intend to respond to other points you make, but I first want to get some kind of agreement about the value of the oil in question.

I could have gone with the Janet and john numbers that show Iraq with the second/third largest oil reserve in the world and my argument is still valid -- that Iraq is the only country where oil production could be quickly and cheaply increased by a significant enough quantity that, produced by the right people and sold to the right people under the right conditions would greatly benefit certain economys. But Iraq really does contain untold quantities of oil. The numbers from people who know what they're talking about show that Iraq could easily have more oil than the rest of the world put together*. It's certainly the largest single oil reserve in the world.
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OK mon, I read your post carefully. Duly noted about distilled wisdom of the ages, and comanies with a vested interest, and your horseshit about Janet and John. I guess my sources must not have a clue. You know, I'm starting to think you didn't look to closely at my numbers, if at all. You couldn't have looked too closely judging by the elapsed time between our posts. And if you won't give my posts due consideration, then I'm just wasting my time.

You're the guy who is so big on facts and evidence. You're the stats guy. You're the guy who started quoting the numbers. I would have preferred some kind of support to your claims, but ok we'll disregard claims about the actual value of the oil, and just say that it's "a lot". I'll go back to your big post of a day or two ago, and address some of your other points, sometime today.

I know one thing for sure, even if I take your figures at face value, your claim of 300x US GDP is off by a factor of 10, approximately.