A good concise examination of the significance of the reserveproduction (R/P) ratio for the future availability of oil can be found in a short paper by Edward W. Erickson in the Energy Journal (1985). He notes that the worldwide R/P ratio is 35, but this ratio is not uniform across the world....

The recent paper in The Energy Journal by A. D. Owen (1985) provided another important example of an econometric relationship for short-term pricing very similar to those presented by Fisher, Cootner, and Baily (1972) for copper, and Banks (1971) for refined zinc. This short comment merely adds...