IEA says current prices justified  

Jerome a Paris has an interesting bit of gossip about tension between the IEA and the Bush administration on updates to their oil supply and demand scenarios.

I have been told by a reliable source that the IEA has been forbidden by the US administration from updating their absurdly cornucopian oil supply and demand scenarios until the report that comes out late this year (after the election); that report, which will publish the result of a "bottom-up" analysis (ie a summary of all existing oil fields, their production and/or prospects) is expected to show that oil production is unlikely to reach the levels that so many have blithely assumed - notably on the basis of previous optimistic IEA reports. The IEA, which was deeply unhappy about the current lies to was supposed to present and support, has been leaking word of the expected content of that new report for many weeks now, including an increasingly alarmist tone in its official reports, such as today's Medium Term Market Outlook:

"Structural demand growth in developing countries and ongoing supply constraints continue to paint a tight market picture over the medium-term," the IEA said in its Medium-Term Oil Market Report, released on Tuesday in Madrid.

"Poor supply-side performance since 2004, in the face of strong demand pressures from developing countries, has forced oil prices up sharply to curb demand," the watchdog added.

Strong demand, disappointing supply. Hmm, where have I read this already?