VIENNA, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) — The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Thursday slammed the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) newest prediction of a peak in fossil gas demand by 2030. OPEC stated this forecast shouldn’t be “fact-based,” and will threaten vitality safety by discouraging investments in oil and gasoline tasks.
IEA govt director Fatih Birol stated in an op-ed within the Financial Times on Tuesday that demand for 3 fossil fuels — oil, gasoline and coal — will peak by the top of this decade. The company’s estimates are primarily based on “today’s policy settings by governments worldwide,” together with the growth of renewable vitality and growing use of electrical automobiles, Birol wrote.
However, OPEC stated in a strongly-worded assertion on Thursday that “consistent and data-based forecasts” don’t assist the IEA’s prediction, accusing the company of “being ideologically driven, rather than fact-based.”
“It is an extremely risky and impractical narrative to dismiss fossil fuels, or to suggest that they are at the beginning of their end … what makes such predictions so dangerous, is that they are often accompanied by calls to stop investing in new oil and gas projects,” OPEC stated.
“Such narratives only set the global energy system up to fail spectacularly. It would lead to energy chaos on a potentially unprecedented scale, with dire consequences for economies and billions of people across the world,” OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais stated within the assertion.
According to OPEC, the IEA prediction additionally has not thought of “the technological progress the (fossil fuel) industry continues to make on solutions to help reduce emissions.” Neither has it acknowledged the very important function of fossil fuels, which “continue to make up over 80 percent of the global energy mix, the same as 30 years ago.”
The oil-producer group stated it might cooperate with all related stakeholders to foster dialogue to contribute to international vitality stability. CONFLICTING NARRATIVES
This shouldn’t be the primary spat between OPEC, which includes 13 main oil-exporting international locations, and the IEA, whose members primarily embody oil-consuming nations such because the United States, Japan and a few European international locations.
The IEA, along with the U.S., Britain and different oil-consuming nations, has beforehand criticized manufacturing cuts by OPEC and its allies, a bunch referred to as “OPEC+”. The IEA has accused OPEC+ of exacerbating the vitality disaster and driving up inflation. OPEC has insisted that the output cuts had been made to stabilize the oil market.
In Tuesday’s op-ed, Birol advocated for quicker vitality transition, and stated that peak fossil gas demand by 2030 can be “a welcome sight.” However, Al Ghais has on a number of events warned of the hazard posed to international vitality safety by declining investments within the hydrocarbon business, and known as for vitality transition in a “well-planned, inclusive, just and fair” method.
In their newest month-to-month oil market experiences, OPEC and the IEA additionally differed markedly on forecasts for international oil demand this yr and subsequent.
In its report revealed on Tuesday, OPEC anticipated world oil demand to rise robustly by 2.44 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2023, and by 2.25 million bpd in 2024, citing “solid global economic growth, amid continued improvements in China.”
However, the IEA stated in its September market report that though international oil demand would develop by 2.2 million bpd this yr, progress would gradual sharply to 1 million bpd subsequent yr as “the recovery runs out of steam and with efficiency gains, EV penetration and working from home further suppressing consumption.”