The IEA Shills For OPEC, The Oil Speculators and the Peak Oil Pranksters

And then of course there is the chicken-little pronouncements of Fatih Birol the Chief Economist of the IEA who garnered much press recently by rehashing the depletion theories of that star peak oil prankster Matt ($500/bbl oil) Simmons. Thereby aligning himself with such soothsayers as Sam Kier’s Pennsylvania ‘Rock Oil’ of 1855. The U.S. Geological Survey of 1885 predicting California having “little or no chance” of finding oil. The California Kern Field written off as depleted in 1942 with forecast of 44 million barrels remaining, only to produce 10 times that amount since, with another 970 million/bbls to go. On to 1914 when the U.S Bureau of Mines assessed that the America’s supply of oil to be adequate for only ten more years, and then upping the rhetoric two years later, predicting “a crisis of the first magnitude”. Continuing to the forecast of the prestigious Club of Rome in 1972, predicting the world would run out of crude by 1990. And the myriad others echoing the same theme, too many to mention.

Thus Birol, once more stirring the peak oil pot with hardly a mention that along with depletion has come a vast increase in accessible oil and gas due to new exploration techniques, spectacular advances in secondary and tertiary recovery with reserves of natural gas in the United State alone having increased by almost a factor of five in the last half dozen years because of new drilling techniques accessing shale gas deposits, while proven oil reserves, according to BP, are some 25% higher than they were 10 years ago.
Of course bringing the imprimatur of the IEA to his theories gives Birol a semblance of authenticity. And this at a time when the world is literally awash in oil, a good time for the industry to pull the peak oil theorists out of the woodwork in the hope countering decreasing demand by interjecting a fluctuating state of alarm over the supply of oil since looming shortages are invariably invoked to justify ever higher prices. Under the circumstances could it just be coincidence that Mr. Birol spent six years working in the Secretariat of the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries before joining the IEA?

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