The world's oil reserves were unchanged in 2015 despite a sharp drop in investment and exploration after the collapse in crude prices, BP said in its benchmark industry report.
Proven oil and gas reserves that can be technically pumped out of the ground typically fluctuate with oil prices as production becomes more or less economically viable.
But in 2015, when Brent oil prices fell by nearly 50 per cent to $52 a barrel, reserves declined by only 0.1 per cent to 1,698 billion barrels, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, first published in 1951 and considered an industry handbook.
Investment in oil and gas fell in 2015 by around a quarter from a year earlier to $160 billion, according to BP Chief Economist Spencer Dale. "You'll have to go back to the late 1970s to see such a sharp fall in investments," Dale told reporters.
Oil production last year rose by 3.2 per cent to 91.67 million barrels per day, driven by increased output from US shale oil production and Iraq and Saudi Arabia increasing production to record levels, the data showed.
BP estimated that the shale revolution in North America increased technically-recoverable oil and gas resources up by 15 per cent. US oil reserves were unchanged last year at 55 billion barrels but were nearly double 2005 levels. "This is truly the age of plenty," Dale said.
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