"Don't believe the figures" - British Geological Survey

Way back in April 2012 the Carbon Brief spoke to Nigel Smith of the British Geological Survey concerning reports in the Times and the Wall Street Journal about supposed vast UK shale gas reserves. It turned out that both papers were referring to the now infamous Reuters report claiming that the UK has 200 tcf of onshore and 1,000 tcf of offshore reserves.

Nigel Smith of the BGS told the Carbon Brief "Don't believe the figures" and "What [the reporter] has done, I think, is take Caudrilla's 200 [trillion cubic feet] and multiply it by five"

This preempts and concurs with my assessment of what has happened to the figures, i.e. that they have been cooked up either by mistake or on purpose. Having been cooked up they have then promulgated by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, newspapers, Mr Rees-Mogg MP and Wikipedia. The latter at least can be corrected.

For further information see:
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/04/1,000-trillion-cubic-feet-of-shale-gas

Some serious questions are:

• How did Reuters get it so wrong? 
• Why did Reuters, the Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Mr Rees-Mogg MP not check the figures? 
• Did Reuters ineptly make this up or did they get it from somewhere else?