“No other industry begins to offer the data problems that are presented by petroleum,” wrote John Blair, a former U.S. government official exactly 40 years ago (“The Control of Oil”, Blair, 1976). The production of basic statistics and forecasts about oil reserves, production, consumption and stocks ought to be a matter of routine. But it has at times sparked fierce debate and even political controversy when statisticians and forecasters have been accused of making significant errors (“The Politics of Mistrust,” Wildavsky and Tenenbaum, 1981). Doubts about the reliability of energy statistics were a major part of the “energy crisis” that erupted during the 1970s. As late as 1968, the United States reportedly had 4 million barrels per day of spare production capacity and thousands of wells across Texas and Louisiana were being operated for fewer than 10 days per month. But by March 1972, spare capacity had dropped to […]