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Peter C. Glover:
The IEA’s “whistleblower”is irrelevant

The 1999 Michael Mann movie The Insider remains one of my favorites. The story of Jeffrey Wigand’s “outing” of Big Tobacco’s lying to Congress over the real science behind cigarette addiction is inspiring. But it seems to me, we may be in danger of running away with a romantic notion of the modern phenomena of “whistle-blowing,” especially in light of the claims by an un-named insider at the International Energy Agency that the agency deliberately overstated available oil reserves.

As a highly opinionated journalist and analyst, I have a long history of engaging in public debate on numerous issues and have always been publicly accountable for my public utterances. I have long despised who believe they have the public interest at heart while cloaking themselves in personal anonymity. The chief reason is that it now becomes impossible to question the facts and motives of those who have publicly impugned the integrity of work colleagues while themselves avoiding such scrutiny.

Take how the story of the IEA’s latest energy report has gained less headlines than those garnered by an anonymous IEA whistle-blowing ‘insider’ which was was broken in the UK by The Guardian newspaper. It headlined: “Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower.” In fact, it transpires from the article itself, that this “US pressure” was more felt than applied. But then a strongly anti-American paper would not worry about such a trifle. The core of the paper’s story rests on the whistle-blowing “senior official” who ascribes “an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves”.

The anonymous insider goes on to assert that the “fear of triggering panic buying” is the IEA’s reasoning. For all we know, all this may well be true. The only trouble is, we the public are denied access to the source to question his/her own facts and motives. To back up this rather spurious state of affairs, the paper next invokes support from regular “external critics” of the IEA’s annual figures. They are referring of course to the burgeoning genre of Peak Oil alarmist literature and headline-grabbing, for over 100 years, has asserted that oil is fast running out.

Next, a second former IEA “source” is quoted, also anonymously. This second source backs the assertion that at the IEA it is “imperative not to anger the Americans.” For good measure he goes on to insist, “We have already entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think the situation is really bad.” Of course, the thesis is that if you keep crying wolf, one day the wolf must surely appear.

An important point to consider here is the motive for the “Americans.” But which Americans, other than the nebulous “bad guys”? The Obama supporters? They would like to say oil is running out to justify all their social and energy engineering. To keep prices low? Why? They want prices to go high so they can say wind and solar are not that bad economically? How about the American oil companies? But they would like nothing more than to see prices rise. One way or another, the whistleblower is actually playing up to the “Americans.”

Halfway through the article, we perceive the glimmer of the real agenda. To get some substance to the story and to get somebody to go on record, The Guardian spoke to John Hemmings a Member of Parliament, and chair of the UK all-party parliamentary group on peak oil and gas. (You can tell from the group’s title how alarmist Peak Oil theory is already a mainstay of British political thinking.) Mr Hemmings weighs in that, “this” – by which he means the IEA whistleblowers’ personal opinions – “all gives an importance to the Copenhagen [climate change] talks and an urgent need for the UK to move faster towards a more sustainable [lower carbon] economy.”

Ah yes, next month’s climate alarmist jamboree in Denmark that so urgently requires a shot in the arm if anything meaningful in the fight against CO2 is to come out of it. Something, by chance, about which The Guardian, the pre-eminent flag-waver for UK global warming and CO2 alarmism, has appeared increasingly concerned.

Finally, in a desperate attempt to add further substance, The Guardian draws on a report published last month by the UK Energy Research Centre, highlighting the sentence that “worldwide production of conventionally extracted oil could ‘peak’ and go into terminal decline before 2020.” Well anything could happen. But note the report’s phrase “conventionally extracted oil.” What about the great potential for less-than-conventional deepwater oil and gas? Or for unconventional oil and gas shale extraction? True these require Big Oil to make big profits to develop the new technology. And the climate of political irrationality on the run up to Copenhagen is hardly conducive to a pro-Big Oil push on those fronts.

To steal shamelessly from a fellow countryman, the whistle-blowing angle amounts to nothing more than “a tale told by an [anonymous] idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” And here are just a few actual facts that suggest why.

As Michael Lynch of the free-market energy blog Master Resource has reported, September 2009 “was a bad one for peak oil enthusiasts.” Lynch highlights the announcement (in a single week) of three separate major new oil finds. Around 3 billion barrels found by BP in the Gulf of Mexico, Petrobras suggest 1 billion at Guara and a new zone at Bakken Shale has been pegged at around another billion barrels or so. More importantly, all three developments showed real progress in new geological areas. In other words, as Lynch points out, such finds “typically represent only 10% or so of the play’s resources.” Yet oil alarmists constantly telling us there are no new plays left. A few extra billion barrels of oil reserves may not sound like much in the overall scheme of oil consumption, but that is to overlook another fact: that such a rate of oil reserve accumulation has been the norm for many years.

Jad Mouawad takes up the running in a New York Times piece, expanding on how, in 2009, “the oil industry has been on a hot streak.” He points to over 200 discoveries spanning five continents and across dozens of countries. Mouawad goes on to point out that while it is normal to discover billions of barrels of new oil every year, “this year’s pace is unusually brisk.” Hardly evidence for an industry running out of raw material.

Cambridge Energy Research Associates calculates that new oil discoveries in 2009 total a lively 10 billion barrels. With oil demand still depressed and unless the world economy picks up, the real threat to further such finds therefore is lower oil prices, and the threat that would mean for pioneering exploration. Yet conservative estimates for deepwater oil in the Arctic Ocean alone are for an estimated 90 trillion barrels.

And we can add to this review the fact of burgeoning natural gas reserves – something else that will increasingly take the heat off future oil supply. As my colleague Robert Bryce has pointed out, in his recent piece “The New Natural Gas Paradigm: 30,000 Trillion cubic feet (and counting)” the peak oil spat has diverted attention from the IEA’s key findings concerning the exciting prospects for recoverable natural gas resources.

On the face of it, the oil and energy facts appear to side with the more optimistic approach of the IEA’s report than that of dissenting voices, within or without. In addition, oil company executives regularly concur with ballpark IEA figures. While genuine debate about the oil realities is perfectly appropriate, we should be questioning the moral integrity of disaffected employees who, though prepared to take their employers’ money, have no qualms about publicly impugning their integrity and that of their colleagues. Deep Throat may have pointed Bob Woodward in the direction of actual evidence, but his views were never the story per se.

While we might applaud the bravery of a Jeffrey Wigand or the perspicacity of a Deep Throat, I would suggest we can only despise the moral spinelessness of paid “senior officials” who choose gutless anonymity to express their public opinions.

Peter C. Glover is a freelance journalist & writer specializing in politics, the media and cultural affairs. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.

Editor's Note:This commentary was originally published by Energy Tribiune on 11/18/2009. Petroleumworld reprint this article in the interest of our readers.

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Petroleumworld News 11/25/09

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