Billions of Barrels of Oil Vanish in a Puff of Accounting Smoke
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-10/billions-of-barrels-of-oil-vanish-in-a-puff-of-accounting-smoke
In an instant, Chesapeake Energy Corp. will erase the equivalent of 1.1 billion barrels of oil from its books
In the end the accountants will bring down the oil and gas companies. The funny math is not funny anymore. ConocoPhillips increased reserves based on the price of oil (and not improvements in production) and ConocoPhillis will in turn decrease reserves based on the price of oil. Despite the losses associated with the production ConocoPhillips will continue to increase production increasing the losses in the end.
That means Chesapeake accounts will be creating 473 million metric tons of CO2 greenhouse gases. Not good for the environment especially considering the COP21 climate agreement. That is one seriously ill-timed puff of smoke.