Daily Caller: This Agency Is Scrambling To Adjust Its Absurd ‘Peak Oil’ Predictions

The International Energy Agency, led by climate alarm advocate Fatih Birol, apparently feels it is safe to start the process of revising its forecasts for oil consumption growth now that the COP28 conference has ended. Right on cue, the agency seen by many as allowing an ideological bias to influence its reports upped its forecast for 2024 demand growth by 130,000 barrels per day less than 24 hours after the final COP28 agreement was made public.

No one should blame Birol and his staff for wanting to get a head start on this year’s revisions. The agency has made a habit of systematically underestimating global crude demand over the past decade, missing the mark on the low side in 10 of the past 12 years. Once the initial lowball estimate is issued, the standard practice involves quietly issuing a series of revisions across the following months that enable Birol to retain a semblance of having been “accurate” by the latter months of each year.

After setting the energy media a-twitter with an extra-low estimate for 2024 along with a preposterous projection that the world would achieve “peak demand” for crude by 2030 in a report published in September, the agency apparently felt a need to get cranking on the revisions as quickly as possible. This initial revision raises IEA’s forecast for crude demand growth to 1.1 million barrels per day for 2024, a bar many still think is absurdly low.