I work in the oil industry. The normal situation is the other way round. Most companies tend to low ball their reserve data when they release it. A lot of total reserve estimates that the US uses is based largely on this data. Most oil companies are just exercising one of the basic tenets of capitalism. That is, for something to have value it must be scarce. It is very unusal for a company to spend tens of millions of dollars surveying and prospecting a field only to give this hard won information away.Trust me girls, there is a lot of oil out there.