OPEC criticizes IEA for its fossil fuel demand prediction

The Vienna-headquartered oil-producer group has criticized Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) for endorsing the view that fossil fuel demand would peak before 2030, calling it "an extremely risky" narrative.

PHOTO: OPEC headquarters in Vienna. Getty Images

“It is an impractical narrative to dismiss fossil fuels, or to suggest that they are at the beginning of their end,” the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said in a statement.

OPEC's statement is a direct response to an op-ed published in the Financial Times on 12 September, in which IEA's executive director Fatih Birol claimed that global fossil fuel demand would peak before 2030 as the world is “witnessing the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era and we have to prepare ourselves for the next era.”

Birol claimed that clean energy technologies like solar panels and electric vehicles, “structural shifts” in China’s economy, and the ill-fated consequence of the global energy crisis will be the key drivers of this change.

According to OPEC, such predictions about peak global demand and supply can turn out to be “dangerous” as they are often “accompanied by calls to stop investing in new oil and gas projects.”

OPEC’s secretary general Haitham al-Ghais has argued that the claims made by the IEA are "ideologically driven, rather than fact-based", and that the agency has not taken into account the technological advancements made by the fossil fuel industry to help reduce emissions.

“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,” said al-Ghais.

He further noted that Birol’s claims do not acknowledge that conventional fuels “continue to make up over 80% of the global energy mix”.

OPEC also highlighted that all its member countries are currently focused on "investing heavily in hydrogen projects, carbon capture utilization and storage facilities" along with renewable energy sources.

By Aparupa Mazumder 

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