Q: Recent comments from the IEA Executive Director that the “data always wins” have sparked a lot of discussion. You’ve frequently raised the importance of ensuring data remains unaffected by policy-biases, so what do you make of these comments?
A: OPEC fully supports the importance of data. Actually, it underpins everything we do. Data before facts, is OPEC’s mantra for providing realistic outlooks that are coherent and consistent.
Since you reference the IEA in your question, the real question should be which of the IEA’s data or data sets ‘always wins’, given the often-contradictory nature of its messaging?
For example, which IEA data has ‘won’ regarding ‘peak oil demand’? Is it the data that led the IEA Executive Director to say in 2017, “We don’t see a peak in oil demand any time soon”? Or the data that led the Executive Director to say in 2022, “Global oil demand will peak before 2030.”
Which IEA data has ‘won’ regarding peak gasoline consumption? The IEA stated in its Oil 2023 report (analysis and forecasts out to 2028: MEES, 16 June 2023), that gasoline demand “is likely to exhibit the earliest and most pronounced peak in demand. Usage will never return to 2019 levels (demand reached 26.7mn b/d) and the post- pandemic peak could come as early as 2023.” However, the IEA’s subsequent Oil 2024 report (analysis and forecasts to 2030) sees gasoline demand exceed 2019 levels in the years 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 (MEES, 14 June 2024).
There are also examples for other energies, such as coal, with past IEA talk of global peaks in 2014, and then in 2024 stating that “global coal production is expected to reach an all-time high.”
I could go on.
Q: When can data be said to have won, given that historical datasets are often still subject to revision?
A: This is an important point and OPEC appreciates that perfection does not exist in forecasting, and that data can receive multiple revisions. However, when talking about data ‘always’ winning it is important to not selectively focus on one data set, while overlooking others and their oft associated policy recommendations.
This is also about understanding realities, not winning or losing, which the IEA Executive Director emphasized at the Global Energy Review launch (2025), “It is something we all need to learn. Stick to data, stick to realities.”
Again, which ‘realities’ did the IEA ‘stick to’ when it published, for example, its Net Zero Roadmap, which modelled that oil demand would have to drop to 72mn b/d by 2030 to reach net-zero by 2050? The IEA’s Oil Market Report of March 2025 noted global oil demand will average 104mn b/d this year. So there is a five-year period for global demand to drop by 32mn b/d.
Which ‘realities’ did the IEA ‘stick to’ when it said that to realize its Net Zero Roadmap, between 2022 and 2030, the world needed to build fifty new lithium mines, sixty new nickel mines and at least seventeen cobalt mines. This comes despite the IEA’s other own writings on long project development lead times for mining asserting that it has taken 16.5 years on average to move mining projects from discovery to first production.
Which ‘realities’ did the IEA ‘stick to’ when it argued there should be no investments in new oil and gas projects?
Data and realities matter.
Q: Given the apparent slowing down of the energy transition narrative, do you expect other agencies’ medium-and-long-term forecasts to be revised so that they are more in line with OPEC’s?
A: The narrative we heard a few years ago from various parties framed renewables as ‘good’ and hydrocarbons as ‘bad’, with targets and timelines that lacked a clear grasp of what meeting them truly entailed. Today, we are witnessing more realistic visions for future energy pathways, which consider energy security, energy availability and reducing emissions, and an understanding that they are distinct for countries and populations around the world.
Our medium- and long-term forecasts are underpinned by the data we see before us. By 2050, we see the global economy more than doubling in size, the global population reaching 9.7bn, a massive urbanization drive and the need to bring electricity to the 685mn people worldwide who still lack access, and clean cooking fuels and technologies to the 2.1bn who still go without. The history of energy has also been one of additions, not subtractions, and today we continue to see expansion in all energies.
We cannot speak for other agencies in relation to their future forecasts, but a non-ideological reference case is essential; adhering to data-focused analysis and grounded in energy realities. After years of OPEC advocating for an all-encompassing approach to future energy pathways – often feeling like the only organization truly considering annual energy demand growth trends and real-world data on hydrocarbon use – it has been encouraging in recent times to see more pragmatic policymaking returning to prominence worldwide.
Q: You have frequently called for forecasting agencies to adhere to data-focused analysis. Looking internally, what does OPEC do to ensure that its methodologies remain as robust as possible?
A: One of the challenges for analysts working in the oil industry is the huge volume of information and disinformation, background noise, agendas, and politicized motivations that energy as a topic can generate. Everyone has an opinion on oil, and many are only too happy to distort facts and data to suit their opinion.
The challenge for reporting and forecasting agencies and organizations like ours is to cut through the noise, distil the information and make sense of the facts. In this way we can deliver on our goal, indeed our mandate, of un-politicized and objective analysis. This is crucial in enabling our Ministers to take informed decisions in the interests of the long-term health of the global industry.
Our methodology to achieve this involves constant monitoring of oil market developments, with the Secretariat’s analysts continuously engaged in this activity. Our focus is very much orientated towards energy realities. Some reporting agencies have unfortunately strayed away from energy realities, resulting in outlandish and damaging claims like there is no need for investments in new oil and gas projects. Strikingly, at this year’s CERAWeek conference in March, the IEA Executive Director said that “there is a need for oil and gas upstream investment. Full stop.”
Q: How important are initiatives such as the Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI) for providing the market with timely, transparent data?
A: To put it simply: timely and transparent data are vital. This was underscored in the workshop we held at the Secretariat on ‘Communications and Robust Data’ at the end of February. Amid today’s complex energy and communications landscapes, transparent, data-driven messaging is more important than ever.
In this regard, we fully support JODI and its objectives, and welcome that it is based at the International Energy Forum that has its home in one of our Member Countries, Saudi Arabia.
Additionally, the Secretariat is currently working on making our data available to external partners through the OPEC Data Hub, which includes data and information going as far back as 1960. We should have more information on this later in 2025.
*Interview conducted over email by Senior Editor Jamie Ingram.
