Is this a sweat shop?

It is the opposite way around: it is to their advantage to over-state reserves  because their share price is linked to the reserves they quote in their annual report. That is why there are regulations in the USA on what reserves companies can state are "proven" and why there was blood on the carpet when Shell restated its reserves downwards recently. Read the business press: you will find it enlightening.

The oil-price has little to do with long-term reserves: it is largely driven by short-term supply and demand and in particular by the level of stocks that exist in the system.

There are good reasons to think that oil is running out faster than was expected until recently. There have been no major new reserves discovered for many years now. We have been here before 25 years ago with the famous "Limits to Growth" book which suggested we'd run out of several key raw materials soon: it wasn't true then because companies didn't go looking for new reserves until they were needed, but it may be true now. Truth is: nobody knows.

Oil production follows a bell curve. Peak production generally lags peak exploration by 40 years. A geologist named Hubbert succesfully predicted peak US prodcution in 1969. World peak production will be somwhere in the next couple of years. You may habve noticed that OPEC are pumping at about 95% of capacity and refineries are operating at 97% capacity. As to reserves no independant organisation has ever confirmed the majority of the Middle Easts figures as they have never been allowed to check them. OPEC quotas were assigned depending on what your reserves were so there was a big incentive to overstate reserves. http://www.odac-info.org/ gives lots of info on oil production.

The marginal fields only become proffitable to extract once the oil price goes up to match the increased cost of extraction.

There are pleanty of alternitaves we should all be aware of the power availible from the wind and the waves considering how often we use it.

In the future things will change and things will stay the same, you can count on it.

Not sure about that.  It could be that shell and BP don't reveal the total reserves of oil/gas avaiable.  If they said that there was plentiful supply, the oil price would drop significantly.

Fossil fuels will last for many more centuries, just a matter of processing it correctly.  It may not be easy to get but the demand is such that the price of oil would mean that it becomes much more feasible to produce.

The only feasible alternative to fossil fuels is nuclear, but the public have such a fear of it that it means that it wouldn't survive without major protest.  We are all too aware of the unpredictable winds and sun that there is very little chance of renewable energy sources being any more than an illusion to make greens feel happy.

Rant over, back to topic, how many sails would the sweat shop be producing, surely there's not that big a demand for laser sails for full scale production?