If you want to know the truth about the current and near-future oilmarket, I suggest you start here:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
More info on peak-oil you can find on this site which has a big active forum too. I visit there daily and I post on the forums too.
http://www.peakoil.com/
I could tell you a whole lot about the history and future of oil but it would probably turn into a 40-page scripture as I have studied the topic intensively over the past year.
a short summary then:
I do not believe in a corporate/political conspiracy other than that the official opec reserves are grossly overstated due to individual members wanting to pump more during the 1980's. The quota's countries were allowed to pump are based on their stated reserves, hence by saying they had more reserves than they actually did they could pump and sell more. In fact the individual members were competing with eachother in this way, resulting in grossly overstated reserves. These "fake" numbers are today used by the large but shrinking group of nay-sayers that say we won't have a problem of peak-oil for at least 2 decades.
At this moment however OPEC is producing flat out to meet growing demand. By the end of this year they will not be able to meet demand and prices will shoot up again. The decline in production at existing wells will not be able to be made up by new projects (which are very few nowadays) coming onstream. By the end of this decade, possibly sooner, actual daily production of crude will start to go into decline and this will be the point we have passed peak oil. The economic consequences, naturally, will be felt all over the globe.
Bas
ps Satanus, where did you hear this/could you direct me to the source? I think you've been misinformed, though there is a minor field under development in cuba.
Everybody seems to be finding more oil - china, cuba, africa, etc. From those reports it seems that there is more oil than ever before