Denny wrote:Sure, let's blame the Mexcian government, rather than say the gloomy words that peak oil has arrived south of the border big time.
The EIA and a lot of such agencies work to a snapshot.
In this case, you could call it something like 'World Energy 2030 Politically Acceptable Scenario.xls', because that is what it contains. The challenge of the forecaster is to fit the data to support that snapshot.
The opposite approach is to base a model on existing trends and fundamentals and run it to 2030, but this produces a picture not fit for publication.
So they choose to write a conclusion and work backwards. Right now we can expose their forecasts using their own monthly data, but I would not take this for granted. Very few countries publish quality statistics, and I expect in a few years the EIA will still be publishing forecasts, but not the monthly data to check anything.