Despite record-high crude oil prices and sticker-shock gasoline bills, the world faces no immediate shortage of oil, according to experts and an article published yesterday in the journal Science.

The Science report, "Never Cry Wolf: Why the Petroleum Age is Far From Over," portrays the world as awash in oil, with all major estimates putting proven reserves above the 1-trillion barrel mark. It was prepared by Leonardo Magugeri, a senior vice president at Italian energy company Eni.

"Proven reserves" means oil known to exist that can be pumped economically at current prices with today's technology. At the current consumption rate of 28 billion barrels a year, proven reserves would last well beyond 2030.

In addition to describing current oil reserves as ample for decades, the report documents a phenomenon termed "reserve growth" that could extend supplies even further into the future. It cites hundreds of instances in which estimates of the amount of oil in major fields have increased dramatically as knowledge about the fields grew.

Estimates in 1944, for instance, suggested that the Kern River oil fields in California held 54 million barrels of oil. By 1986, the fields had produced 736 million barrels and geologists estimated remaining reserves at another 970 million barrels.

"Proved reserves have, indeed, been always growing," said Roger W. Bentley, secretary of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, a network of scientists in 24 countries that monitors world petroleum resources.

"Proved reserves have been very conservative numbers, indeed. They do not reflect the total oil that has been discovered, but only that small portion for which definite plans are in place for current access."

Bentley warned, however, that while the United States tends to underreport oil reserves, other countries inflate reserve figures.

Craig B. Hatfield, an authority from the University of Toledo, explained that OPEC, the world oil cartel, bases production quotas on the size of each member country's reserves. This creates an incentive to inflate reserves, in order to sell more oil, he said.

On the other hand, Magugeri noted that always-improving technology allows more oil to be economically extracted from existing fields. Barely 22 percent of the oil in a typical deposit could be recovered in 1980, compared to 35 percent in 2003.

Magugeri described how countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, which, together, possess 35 percent of proven oil reserves, pump oil from only a few old fields, while letting dozens of others sit idle.

"The countries richest in oil have minimized their oil investments during the last 20 years, mainly for fear of creating a permanent excess capacity, such as that which provoked the crisis in 1986, when oil prices plummeted below $10 a barrel," he said.

In January, Royal Dutch Shell downgraded its reserves estimate by 20 percent, setting off global jitters about the oil supply, but it did not represent an actual reduction in the amount of oil the company expected to find, Magugeri said. Rather, the company shifted 3.9 billion barrels of reserves from one category to another to comply with financial accounting rules. Those barrels are expected to shift back to the proven reserves category in the years ahead.

The Shell controversy gave new life to "oil doomsters," Magugeri said, noting that imminent petroleum shortages have been predicted since 1919.

"To 'cry wolf' over the availability of oil has the sole effect of perpetuating a misguided obsession with oil security and control that already is rooted in Western public opinion," Magugeri said. Western countries, worried over a looming oil crunch, seek to control the Persian Gulf by various means of "oil imperialism," he said.

"It is true that the world will not run out of oil for a long time," said Hatfield, who published a major 1997 study on the topic. It predicted world oil production would peak around 2010 and then begin a permanent decline.

Hatfield and some other geologists warn that the peak of oil production is the key date to keep in mind, not the date when oil runs out. When production begins to decline -- whether in 2010 or sometime later -- oil prices will skyrocket, causing economic upheaval, Hatfield contended, especially if the demand for oil continues to grow.