IEA concedes oil demand surpasses supply
December 6th, 2007 by Jim JustThe International Energy Agency (IEA) is the energy watchdog of the OECD countries. It’s still in denial about peak oil. But recently it has acknowledged that demand has come to exceed supply. Aad van Bohemen, the Director of Crisis Management at the IEA, said in an interview on Dutch television:
“The situation on the oil market is worrisome in the sense of there being more demand than supply. This does not mean that we should panic because of an acute shortage of oil, there is sufficient oil in the world. There is production capacity that can be brought to the market by the oil producing countries. But this capacity should be brought to the market to meet supply. So the situation is on overall worrisome, but it is not yet time to panic.â€
While denigrating the concept of peak oil, he conceded to the concept’s basic premise.
“In the long term oil will run out, it is a finite resource. So on the long term we need to shift to different energy sources. The question is whether we have sufficient time to switch to energy sources such as sustainable energy, solar energy.”
What most people are not yet ready to confront is a different question: what do we do if sufficient alternative sources prove not to be forthcoming?