Nov 10 2009

It Was Never About The Oil

Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower

Exclusive: Watchdog’s estimates of reserves inflated says top official

Terry Macalister

guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 November 2009 21.30 GMT

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.

In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.

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  1. Big news!

    • dkmich on November 10, 2009 at 13:19
    • #

    NatGEO finds evidence of prior poll shifts that rapidly blanketed parts of the globe in hundreds of feet of snow, freezing trees and plants (and the ice man) in a frozen time capsule.  I think we should plan a party for December ???, 2012.  

    • Edger on November 10, 2009 at 13:32
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    This is the second time in less than a year that Fatih Birol and the IEA have admitted to supplying inflated and overestimated world energy supply figures to world governments.

    I wrote about this here last December when I posted a Real News video they had sourced also from The Guardian with George Monbiot interviewing Birol.

    At that time Birol had claimed that his previous years estaimates had been fabricated, but that his 2008 report was finally correct.

    And now he is saying that report was not correct too?

    …

    The Defining Moment, December 19, 2008

    Britain’s leading green commentator, George Monbiot, talks to Fatih Birol at the IEA in the Real News video below, who reveals for the first time a startling and worrying prediction for the date of peak oil.

    And finds that the rate of decline of oil production that Birol and The International Energy Agency have been giving to governments around the world for the past few years has been simply an assumption – a guess – based on no research at all.

    A guess. Based on no research at all. Until this year. This years World Energy Outlook 2008 is finally based on real research, and on real numbers.

    And the numbers are not at all good. Not nearly as good as the projections that Birol and the IEA have been supplying to world governments for their transportation systems planning and strategy development for the past few years.

    Which means, of course, that all of that planning and strategizing has been fantasyland planning and strategizing, based on assumptions, guesses, that energy supplies will be much higher that they will be.



    Real News: December 18, 2008

    George Monbiot questions Fatih Birol on peak oil

    Guardian: International Energy Authority chief economist reveals startling prediction for peak oil date

  4. http://www.theorionproject.org…

    George Monbiot? 911 “debunker” George Monbiot

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