After yesterday’s rambling post on net energy, a quickie on the International Energy Agency whistle blower fracas.

Gregor.us puts the story eloquently into context today. In Let Them Eat Data he also asks:

But what’s particularly bizarre in today’s IEA World Energy Outlook 2009 report is that the IEA maintains their forecast of a peak in global oil supply around 2030, but now suggests Non-OPEC supply will peak next year. Sorry, you can’t have 60% of world supply peaking in 2010, and then a final global peak 20 years from now. Besides, Non-OPEC peaked five years ago, and is currently on care and maintenance.

No-one in the oil patch or the peak oil fraternity is the remotest bit surprised that the IEA has allegedly been fudging its data and conclusions for political reasons. As the President of ASPO International, Kjell Aleklett,  wrote yesterday, the only surprise is that no-one blew the whistle earlier.

Now the two big questions are:

1. How much lower are the IEA’s real forecasts compared with their public position?
2. To what extent, if any, have Governments like the UK (which base their energy strategy on IEA advice) been discounting the degree of exaggeration involved?

The second question is the most interesting.

A Government that is allegedly close to the US administration, such as the UK, would surely be tipped the wink about the IEA’s risky optimism. If it was not, what is the point of having a “special relationship”?

But even if the UK was in on the game, what could it do about it? If we set energy policies based on the ‘real’ data our actions would have made it plain that we regarded the IEA’s public data as bogus.

But if we set our energy policies in line with the IEA’s public position, we were being either very gullible or prepared to screw ourselves handsomely (by not preparing sufficiently) purely in order not to rock the Anglo-US loveboat.

Everything about the UK’s economic, foreign and energy policy says we did the latter. If so, what were we promised in return? That Uncle Sam would pull us out of the economic/energy hole we were digging for ourselves? And with what? Iraqi oil?

Above: You couldn’t make it up. Actually, that’s just what they did.