WILL THE INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY'S OIL FORECAST BE WRONG AGAIN?

"Now, the IEA tells us that a "revolutionary" new technology called hydraulic fracturing--actually, a newly deployed variant called high-volume slick-water hydraulic fracturing--is going to cause what it calls a "supply shock" that spells ample and rising oil supplies. But, despite years of such drilling in the United States--which the agency says will be the center of this "shock"--world oil prices remain near all-time highs as measured by the average daily price. And, world oil production (crude plus lease condensate) has only occasionally bounced above 75 mbpd in the last seven years before retreating downward ... Perhaps the agency noticed the withdrawal of ExxonMobil Corp. last year from Poland. The company said it could not find commercial quantities of hydrocarbons in what had been billed as Europe's most promising shale gas deposits. Shale gas, of course, is extracted using the same fracking techniques as tight oil ... And then, just prior to the release of the IEA's latest forecast, Talisman Energy Inc. and Marathon Oil Company pulled out of Poland as well for similar reasons. The point is not that there is no exploitable tight oil or shale gas outside the United States ... Even in the United States--the center of the putative boom--drillers have ended up focusing on a few "sweet spots" that yield commercial quantities of oil or natural gas ... The IEA seems to be unaware of certain key information that is publicly available or doesn't understand the significance of that information. And, the agency doesn't seem to remember what it said in its last forecast ... It turns out such forecasts fail so often that it's puzzling that the media, governments, corporations, and the public put so much faith in them. Those whose plans were based on the IEA's 2000 forecast were completely blindsided by developments just a few years later."

Zum Artikel von Kurt Cobb, erschienen auf Resource Insights (19. Mai 2013) »

Zur Übersicht des Medium-Term Oil Market Report-2013, erschienen bei der IEA (14. Mai 2013) »

Gareth Harper // CC BY-NC-SA 2.0