Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia's top oil company executive and the head of the U.S. government's energy forecasting agency said they are confident technological gains will boost oil reserves and production rates in coming years.

``Technological transfer occurs more quickly in this industry than in any other,'' Guy Caruso, head of the U.S. Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said at a conference in Vienna today. High oil prices will speed up such advances, he said.

Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Jum'ah said he has challenged his oil engineers to boost recovery rates by 20 percent in 25 years, a move that would add 1 trillion barrels to reserves. In time, worldwide reserves may grow by between 3 trillion and 4 trillion barrels as technology improves, he said.

Proven global oil reserves ended 2005 at 1.2007 trillion barrels, little changed from 1.1941 trillion a year earlier, BP Plc said in its annual Statistical Review of World Energy in June. That figure excludes less proven deposits, which companies say will become proven reserves in time.

Saudi Aramco, the state-run Saudi oil company, has boosted its computing power 300-fold since 1999 and now has a better understanding of its reserves, Jum'ah said.

The size of existing reserves and resources discredits the ``peak oil'' theory that world oil production is already close to peaking, the Saudi executive said, repeating a view he has expressed previously.

Rex Tillerson, chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly owned oil company, said at the same conference that technological progress will continue.

``The era of easy oil is not over, because there has never been easy oil,'' Tillerson said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Voss in Vienna through the London newsroom at sev@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 13, 2006 04:36 EDT