http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/05/ ... S-32280322
Note : M Auzanneau is the person that published the interview/mail exchange with Glenn Sweetnam :
http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/03/ ... S-32280322
Interview often refered to as "published by Le Monde" although it is not the case (published on his blog hosted by le monde, anybody can get one), and Le Monde not really eager to officialy publish something on this story)
The post :
How the global oil watchdog failed its mission (1/3)
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By Lionel Badal
Part 1 – AN INCONVENIENT REALITY
12 years ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA) discovered that Peak Oil would threaten the prosperity and stability of our societies. Yes, they knew it. While some IEA officials tried to inform the world about this game-changing event, it appears that others had different priorities…
In 1998, the IEA team working on the influential World Energy Outlook (WEO) made a detailed and authoritative assessment about the future of oil production. The team was composed of the world’s finest energy experts, amongst whom Jean-Marie Bourdaire, coordinator of the study, Ken Wigley, Keith Miller and the man who would later become Chief-Economist of the IEA, Dr. Fatih Birol.
By using confidential databases and sophisticated expertise, they reached a dramatic conclusion: Peak Oil, the moment when global oil production starts its irreversible decline, would happen well before 2020, around 2014.
Although the IEA publicly claims to be free of any external meddling, the team was under intense pressure and scrutiny. As recalled by the veteran geologist Dr. Colin Campbell, who advised the IEA on the 1998 WEO, at one point, Bourdaire had to stop calling him from his IEA office as the issue apparently became “so sensitive” that he couldn’t be seen in contact with him.
Formed in the aftermaths of the 1973 oil shock by wealthy countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the IEA, a self-proclaimed “global oil watchdog”, and its flagship report, the WEO, are considered to be the most authoritative source of information in the energy sector. To put it in the words of the Agency :
“Governments and industry around the world have come to rely on the WEO to provide a consistent basis on which they can formulate policies and design business plans.”
Nevertheless, in 1998, the most influential member of the Agency, the USA, didn’t like at all what was coming from their study. A structural problem with oil as identified by the IEA team would undeniably question the sustainability of the current economic model. During the study, the IEA team realised the extent to which economic growth was correlated to the availability of abundant and cheap energy. Hence, once oil production would stop to grow and tensions appear, economic growth would become far more difficult to sustain, if not impossible. The IEA team was effectively walking on eggshells.
In order to soften the striking message, the IEA added that a “balancing item” called “Unidentified Unconventional Oil” would suddenly appear and rise from nothing in 2010 to 19.1 mb/d in 2020 (conveniently about enough to cancel the shortages…)
The only problem was that unconventional oil resources were well known. This “balancing item” was in reality a code for: shortages. The “balancing item” never existed and never will. A former member of the IEA team in charge of the 1998 WEO confirmed that to me in December 2009 during an interview under Chatham House Rule.
[Interestingly, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistical branch of the US Department of Energy (DOE), will use a similar subterfuge in 2009, when it will talk of “unidentified projects” filling the gap of declining production.]
Fortunately, the story did not end there. Campbell had been in contact with a British environmental expert, Dr. David Fleming, who was by chance a regular contributor to the magazine Prospect. As such, when the 1998 World Energy Outlook was published, Campbell who was fully aware of the message it contained, explained this to Fleming. On the 20th of April 1999, Fleming wrote a prophetic article entitled, “The next oil shock?”. The article effectively said what the IEA team could not write in its report:
“The latest issue of the International Energy Agency’s annual publication, World Energy Outlook, is a case in point. It has a story to tell which will profoundly affect the future of every man and woman on earth…The prospect of a one-way oil price shock early in the next decade changes the present economic and political agenda profoundly. Assumptions of sustained economic growth and low unemployment will be blown out of the water… So why is the IEA not shouting about this ? As the most influential policy body in the oil business, it is in a delicate position. It cannot just blurt it out. It cannot say: ‘We are looking at a big, permanent oil deficit, for which we can offer no solutions’… The IEA has revealed the situation in coded form.”
From its Paris HQ, the IEA had raised a powerful, and yet unwelcomed alarm. A backlash was about to fall on the authors of the 1998 WEO…
Coming next : “How the global oil watchdog failed its mission (2/3) - Part II – THE SHADOW OF THE US”
