LEX It was barely 10 years ago that a well-reasoned cover story in The Economist told us we were “drowning in oil” and that its price could drop by more than half to $5 a barrel. As everybody now knows, prices rose tenfold before peaking last summer. There are just so many moving parts to the energy market that making forecasts is a mug’s game. If exhaustive detail is a measure of credibility, though, few sources equal the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook, published on Wednesday.
Coinciding with the first time since 1981 that global energy use has declined, 2009’s report is not complacent about future energy supply and environmental challenges. Like many forecasts, though, it makes the mistake of extrapolating recent trends too freely. For example, the IEA expects global oil production to rise from last year’s 85m barrels to 105m by 2030 while acknowledging that about two-thirds of this will come from fields yet to be found or developed. But at what cost?
