There are a lot of huge numbers in the oil and gas industry--dollars, barrels, MMcfs. It's hard to grasp their true meaning and context. What's a billion, anyway? But I got a new and frightening perspective when I came across the following insight at a peak oil website recently, the ASPO-USA (Association for the Study of Peak Oil): If some E&P company were fantastically lucky and announced a headline-making discovery of 500 million barrels of oil--recoverable-- that may not be so much of a big windfall after all. Why not, you say? It is the equivalent of only 25 days of current U.S. oil consumption! Not even a month. --Lhaines@hartenergy.com