Insider, the Reuters online multimedia news platform, interviewed IEA Oil Industry and Markets Division head David Fyfe about the Agency’s newest Oil Market Report, released on 12 April. The report said an increase in OPEC supplies has helped break the cycle of tightening oil-market fundamentals that has been in effect for several years. “We’re highlighting this month that the tide may have turned in terms of market fundamentals,” Fyfe said, adding, “We would expect some of the steam has been taken out of the market with this ramp-up in OPEC supply.”

In its cover story, "The Truth about Oil", Time interviews many of the leading experts on oil, including IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol. In the article, which also relies on IEA statistics to buttress its conclusion that new breakthroughs are increasing U.S. oil supplies, Birol is quoted on how the Americas are on the way to becoming an oil-exporting region once again. "We’re seeing rapid and major changes in the geopolitics of oil," Birol told the magazine. (Article available to paying subscribers only.)

The solar photovoltaic market is characterized by hard competition, with manufacturing capacity of solar panels worldwide being about the double of demand, IEA Renewable Energy Division Head Paolo Frankl told Le Monde in an interview. The European PV industry is under particular pressure because of massive Chinese production and reductions in economic incentives in Europe. The challenge for the European industry will be to find new markets in other world regions, Frankl said. At the same time, the inception of the Chinese domestic market – with a target of 15 GW of PV installed by 2015 – will take off some pressure. (Interview in French.)

The Financial Times featured IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol in a report on the big shifts in energy worldwide. “We are definitely seeing the role of climate change and environmental concerns sliding down the agenda for policy makers,” Birol said in an interview for the lead article of an FT special section on energy. “Given the financial crisis in many countries, interest in cheaper energy sources is getting bigger – mainly coal and gas for the generation of electricity.” (Registration required)

IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol warned that if crude prices stay at their current levels, leading economies will pay USD 1.5 trillion this year for oil imports, enough to tip the world back into recession, with the European Union at particular risk. Birol noted that every recession in industrialised countries since World War II had been preceded by an oil price spike. (Registration required.)

A number of governments in Europe are introducing measures limiting financial support for renewable energy. These moves should not be viewed as a backlash against renewables, Maria van der Hoeven, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, argues in a Viewpoint article in European Energy Revew. On the contrary, they show that renewable energy is coming of age. Van der Hoeven does warn, however, that policy changes should be made in a transparent and predictable way.

IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol forsees a “substantial” long-run rise in the demand for oil. During a radio interview with the BBC World Service, he cited in particular increasing car ownership in China, India and the Middle East as a driver of the new demand. “We have to be realistic,” he said when commenting on the supply side, as there are significant reserves of oil underground but these do not immediately translate into greater supply at filling stations. Higher oil prices will affect three main areas, he said: transportation, food and heating costs. He concluded, “The impacts are much more pronounced in the developing countries, where energy prices have a higher share in the family budgets.”
(Interview starts at 8 minutes into the Back to the Future report of “Business Daily” show)

Emerging markets, especially in Asia, are driving up oil demand this year, and the resulting higher prices are cutting into consumption by developed countries, according to the IEA Oil Market Report for March. With Asia making up about 80% of increased demand, according to the report as well as continuing uncertainty about Iran, IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven described 2012 as “rocky” for the oil market. She added, “In the past few months, in some non-OPEC countries there were problems with supply and that has led to less oil on the market from these countries.”

Iraq can more than double its crude oil production within the next few years, IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol said in Baghdad at the end of a fact-finding visit. “Many Iraqi interlocutors I met are talking about 6.5 mbd by 2015 and I don't think that this is an unrealistic target, but of course many challenges remain," he said. Birol was in Iraq to meet with oil officials and industry experts as the IEA prepares a special review of the country in the flagship publication World Energy Outlook 2012 to be published in November.

Denmark acknowledges the IEA’s position that “the era of cheap energy is over”, Renewable Energy Magazine reports in its Panorama section, and that recognition shows in the IEA’s new In-Depth Review of Danish energy policies. REM quotes IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven expressing support for Denmark's long-term vision for a low-carbon future: the country seeks to generate its entire energy supply from renewable sources by 2050. But REM notes IEA concerns regarding such an ambitious strategy.

Key European Union countries have already stopped buying Iranian oil, said Didier Houssin, IEA director of energy markets and security, which shows that the EU can cope with Iran’s claim that it has halted exports to British and French companies ahead of the EU’s July 1 embargo. “We don't think this announcement will have a real impact on the market, because France and the UK have already stopped buying crude from Iran," he said, noting that demand for crude typically declines at the end of the Northern Hemisphere winter. “If such a move were taken by Iran to immediately stop all their exports to the EU, we don't think it would have a very significant impact on the market,” he said [corrected from report], adding, "We are monitoring the situation carefully as we usually do. We stand ready to react if needed."

Russian energy exports are enjoying a boom, based on sustained demand from Asian markets, that highlights how critical it is for the country to invest about $100 billion to expand and improve the sector, IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol said in an interview in Moscow. He also noted, "The most important thing for Russia is to try and use energy much more efficiently."

The IEA will canvass ideas for its regulatory recommendations about unconventional extraction of shale gas, including so-called fracking, at a workshop it is organising for March 7, 2012, in Warsaw. The recommendations will be issued in a study report in May, as an excerpt from the IEA’s annual flagship publication, the World Energy Outlook, that comes out in November. IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol said governments must address serious environmental problems that include water pollution and methane-gas venting linked to production and extraction of unconventional gas. “We hope the G-20 will consider the [regulatory] recommendations during their deliberations in Mexico this year and discuss what can be done to address these challenges,” he said. He added that new regulation based on the recommendations may give a slight increase in the cost of production, but the good news is that existing technology can minimize or completely address these real environmental problems.”

IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven reiterated that she welcomes statements by key Gulf producers that they will continue to meet existing and any incremental demand from their customers. Speaking in Davos during the World Economic Forum, she also highlighted the IEA’s estimates for oil demand this year, noting that the Agency’s different scenarios are predicated on global growth rates.

The global demand for oil demand fell by 300 000 barrels a day in the final quarter of 2011 in the first decline since the 2008-09 global financial crisis, according to the International Energy Agency. The weakening economy, a mild winter and high crude prices combined to slow consumption. The IEA still forecasts overall growth in demand for 2012, but it scaled back that increase by 200 000 barrels to 1.1 million barrels a day. David Fyfe, head of the Oil industry and Markets Division, said, “We’re flagging that there are clearly downside risks to the global economy and to oil demand.”

A global economic slowdown and the eurozone debt crisis have curbed government investment in renewable energy, IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol and other experts warned participants in the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. "There are already some signs that government support may be slowing down in Europe," Birol said, naming Germany and Spain as countries where support for renewables has apparently declined. He added that although the renewable energy sector was continuing to grow, its expansion was "far slower" than it should be to meet demand. "The energy sector needs long-term planning," he said, arguing that "it would be a pity" if governments fail to fully support the development of renewables.

Global subsidisation of fossil fuel consumption -- €321.3 billion in 2010 – is the biggest obstacle to the development of renewable energy, the International Energy Agency’s Chief Economist, Fatih Birol, explained during the second day of the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. He added that the IEA’s World Energy Outlook shows that fuel subsidies are a very inefficient way of helping the poor: only 8% of the huge subsidies for fossil fuels in 2010 reached the poorest 20% of people around the world.

The International Energy Agency's member countries would release oil stockpiles “only if we have really serious supply disruption," IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said in an interview in Abu Dhabi during the World Future Energy Summit. The IEA is examining which nations have extra capacity, she said, expressing confidence in Saudi Arabia’s ability to provide spare oil production capacity. “We monitor and assess the situation,” Ms. Van der Hoeven said.

If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change. "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety], “said IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol at the launch of the World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2011 in London. If current trends continue, and we go on building high-carbon energy generation, then by 2015 at least 90% of the available "carbon budget" will be swallowed up by our energy and industrial infrastructure. By 2017, there will be no room for manoeuvre at all – the whole of the "carbon budget" will be spoken for, according to the IEA's calculations. Birol's warning comes at a crucial moment in international negotiations on climate change, as governments gear up for the next fortnight of talks in Durban, South Africa, from late November. "I think it's very important to have a sense of urgency – our analysis shows [what happens] if you do not change investment patterns, which can only happen as a result of an international agreement,” added Birol.

Jumps in oil prices, which led some countries to withdraw crude from stockpiles earlier this year, are less likely as economic growth slows and Libyan fields resume output, said David Fyfe, Head of the IEA’s Oil Industry and Markets Division. “There is not the same potential for economically damaging spikes in price in the fourth quarter that we saw in the third quarter,” he added.