Two Senior IEA Officials: Oil Reserves Have Intentionally Been Overstated to Prevent Panic Buying . . . Peak Oil is Real → Washingtons Blog
Two Senior IEA Officials: Oil Reserves Have Intentionally Been Overstated to Prevent Panic Buying . . . Peak Oil is Real - Washingtons Blog

Monday, November 9, 2009

Two Senior IEA Officials: Oil Reserves Have Intentionally Been Overstated to Prevent Panic Buying . . . Peak Oil is Real


As I have previously noted, the world's top energy economist - the International Energy Agency's Dr. Fatih Birol - has previously predicted that we will have peak oil by 2020.

And I have previously disclosed that an insider told me we already have peak oil.

Now, an article in the Guardian states that official oil estimates have been intentionally inflated to prevent panic:

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies...

Now the "peak oil" theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. "The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually ..."The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

"Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources," he added.

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added....

The World Energy Outlook is produced annually under the control of the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, who has defended the projections from earlier outside attack. Peak oil critics have often questioned the IEA figures.

But now IEA sources who have contacted the Guardian say that Birol has increasingly been facing questions about the figures inside the organisation.

Matt Simmons, a respected oil industry expert, has long questioned the decline rates and oil statistics provided by Saudi Arabia on its own fields. He has raised questions about whether peak oil is much closer than many have accepted.


4 comments:

  1. Pictures are worth a thousand words here's a link to a simple slide show showing where we stand and the limits to where we can go. http://dieoff.org.htm1

    Reserve data for oil has been mutiplated to the point that most data is worthless. OPEC's reserves were doubled overnight when they switched produciton quota's to estimated reserves , what they actually have is anybody's guess. Capitalism cannot survive without growth, and growth will be impossible without oil.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Signals? Goldman Sachs and other big players have stockpiled physical oil, and Warren Buffett just bought a railroad. These are not stupid folks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Peak oil took place ten years ago; peak 'cheap' oil, that is. Don't believe me, look up EIA prices and see for yourself:

    http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WTOTWORLD&f=W

    Most of the accessible oil is gone and the remainder is both expensive and scarce. Expense amplifies scarcity as demand destruction removes investment funds increasing production destruction.

    Modern industrial capitalism has successfully and efficiently destroyed its own resource basis with little to show for it. All the waffling of the establishment cannot change that fact.

    ReplyDelete
  4. And so now what he's doing is...encouraging Panic Buying?

    Yeah...look, there's all kinds of people who don't want the recovery to happen, because it's going to be broadbased, and job, wage and labor based.

    I have zero reason to trust these "analysts".

    ReplyDelete

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