massornament

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released its latest World Energy Outlook which paints a relaitvely rosy picture of world demand and supply.  Not surprisingly, most news reports I have heard/read this morning basically repeat the factoid-summary of the report as provided by the IEA and certainly without any hint of the underlying debates and disagreements over the future of demand and, especially significant, the future of supply.  At any rate, the IEA’s report is available here:

http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

In the report (which I have just skimmed through), the IEA denies any problems with future supply but has, over recent years, lowered its projected demand/supply.  Now, they state that the projected world supply will rise to 105 mn b/d (million barrels per day) by 2030.

Yesterday, the Guardian newspaper in Britain posted a front-page article where they quoted an anonymous whistle-blower within the IEA who questions the overly positive projections and accuses the U.S. of applying pressure to maintain such projections:

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 to 116m and then 105m last year,” said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. “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.

The full article is available here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/peak-oil-international-energy-agency

Politics and perhaps the genuine worry that the truth mightcreate massive speculation and panic could be forcing the IEA to basically deny any problems exist with long-term supply of petroleum.  Regardless, the IEA’s reports, including this one, have been questioned and by a variety of different sources:

http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/tiki-index.php?page=Global+Oil+Depletion

http://peakoiltaskforce.net/

Questioning the ‘official’ numbers has been going on for a long time.  I recently read Matthew Simmons’ book on Saudi Arabian oil (Twighlight in the Desert) and he wroate about some long-forgotten U.S. senate hearings where the future of oil supplies was questioned… and then basically buried.  So this is nothing new to those geologists and oil industry analysts (at least to those who are willing to ask the questions).

If I can find the time, I will post many otehr sources of information on the topic, including a bibliography I used in one of my classes.

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