Oil is slippery, probably why the people associated with it are too. According to reports in the Guardian, a whistleblower at the IEA, no less, has claimed that the agency has been deliberately downplaying the shortage of oil for fear of panic buying. The whistleblower further reveals that it was the US which used its influence to nudge the agency to underplay the rate of decline of oil from the existing fields, not to mention asking it to overplay the chances of finding new reserves.
The revelation couldn't have preferred a better timing-just on the eve of the release of the World Energy Outlook. The IEA was established thirty five years ago in 1974 as a quasi-political body to prevent another oil crisis, track and study the global oil market and safeguard oil supplies to the west. They publish the World Energy Outlook every year, on demand and supply of oil used by many governments for their energy and climate change policies. Last year, the World Economic Outlook asserted that oil production could be raised from 83mb/d barrels at present to 105 mb/d by 2030. It mentioned that about two-thirds of this would come from fields 'yet to be found or developed'. The new report released this year echoes last year's figures; in the reference scenario it projects a recovery in 2010 reaching 88 mb/d in 2015 and 105 mb/d in 2030 'with enough investments
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