Venezuelan Oil Stats War

[ Petroleos de Venezuela SA says the IEA is publishing erroneous Venezuela oil production figures.

Is the IEA so politicised that it might misrepresent numbers to add weight to the argument that the Chavez government is mismanaging their oil fields, thereby increasing international pressure against the regime? The IEA denies this. So does it seem more likely that Venezuela is giving false reports to the SEC?

Sohbet Karbuz, former head of the non-OECD energy statistics section of the IEA, does some number crunching, and discovers that while the missing barrels are fewer than some accounts when recategorised for proper comparison, they nevertheless amount to a hefty half a million barrels per day. Something is wrong here, but we don’t know what it is…
-AF ]

Stats war is the conflict over statistics.

On 20 November 2006, the International Herald Tribune run a piece entitled: PDVSA says IEA publishing erroneous Venezuela oil production figures.

According to the article Venezuela’s state oil company (Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA) said the International Energy Agency (IEA) is