| IEA: Forced to Eat Their Optimistic Data on Future Oil Supply? |
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 ...Let’s go back a few months and find some of the early signals, however, indicating this story was likely overdue. In August, a journalist at a separate British newspaper, The Independent, had conducted a long interview with the IEA’s chief Fatih Birol. In that interview, Dr. Birol made a number of very clear statements about the rather dire prospects for any future growth in world oil supply. This was unsurprising, in some respects, because the IEA had already asserted, in World Energy Outlook 2008, that existing oil fields were declining by at least 4.00% if not 6.00% per annum, and that to actually lift global oil production would require not billions, but trillions, of investment.
But something odd happened in the weeks that followed this interview. First, Dr. Birol was interviewed by another journalist, this time David Strahan. In this subsequent interview, Birol claimed he’d either been misunderstood, or misquoted, by the Independent’s journalist–Steve Connor–who had reported that Birol was calling for “peak oil in about ten years.” The dispute appears to have turned on the issue of conventional oil vs all liquids (which includes natural gas liquids). Was Birol talking about just crude oil with the Independent’s journalist? Or was that interview about all liquids, which includes biofuels? Regardless, the confusion conformed to a pattern at IEA in which conclusions stated in reports and publications were hedged in public statements, or vice-versa.
Seeking Alpha
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Posted on Saturday, November 14 @ 06:39:13 PST by Leanan |
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Average Score: 5
Votes: 1
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