And with all the volatility in the oil market, it is best to tune out the media and tune in market timing signals.

Consider http://invetrics.com

Its daily DJIA index trading signal is up a respectable 68% for the year (as of November 1, 2009) and it is free of charge for individual investors.

Let's see how the IEA reacts… but their reputation is now seriously tarnished. (Great post by the way)

Oil: future world shortages are being drastically underplayed, say experts

• Swedish academics slate IEA's report as 'political document' for countries with vested interest in low prices
• Oil production 'likely to be 75m barrels a day rather than 105m'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/12/...

A leading academic institute has urged European governments to review global oil supplies for themselves because of the “politicisation” of the International Energy Agency's figures.

Uppsala University in Sweden today published a scathing assessment of the IEA's annual World Energy Outlook, saying some assumptions drastically underplayed the scale of future oil shortages.

Kjell Aleklett, professor of physics at Uppsala and co-author of a new report “The Peak of the Oil Age”, claims oil production is more likely to be 75m barrels a day by 2030 than the “unrealistic” 105m used by the IEA in its recently published World Energy Outlook 2009. The academic, who runs a Global Energy unit at Uppsala, described the IEA's report as a “political document” developed for consuming countries with a vested interest in low prices.

Aleklett, whose latest work was funded by the state-owned Swedish Energy Agency, said he had experience of similar internal worries about the IEA.

“The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) gave me the task of writing the report, Peak Oil and the Evolving Strategies of Oil Importing and Exporting Countries. This report was one of those discussed at a round-table meeting that was held in the IEA's conference room in Paris. At that opportunity, in November 2007, I had a number of private conversations with officers of the IEA. The revelations now reported in the Guardian were revealed to me then under the promise that I not name the source. I had earlier heard the same thing from another officer from Norway who, at the time he spoke of the pressure being applied by the USA, was working for the IEA.”

G

Here is my take on “oil and economics.”

For what it is worth (not much in my opinion) I have a PhD in economics. My bottom line is that “regime change” is the most succinct way to put in words the nature of the problem. By this I mean: we face a change of energy regime from one in which the marginal cost of oil is falling to one in which it is rising. This change is of immense consequences.

Here is my take (in which I try to be lighthearted about serious matters).
http://oilandeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/10/oil...
P. Johnston

G

G

US oil companies don't really want a reduction in consumer patterns, and feeling that there is a shortage in our near future would do that, perhaps even leave them with excess inventory with little market. The oil giants want to run out the clock and burn every barrel of oil at huge profits against growing demand, and then probably go on government life-support for a few decades while they dither over “what to do oh my”, and then turn off the lights as rich men.

But what about the end users of IEA data and advice? To what extent, if any, have Governments like the UK been discounting the degree of exaggeration in WEO and other reports when setting their energy policy?

Assuming that the hand on the IEA's remote control was indeed the US's, surely a government that was allegedly close to the US administration, such as the UK, would have private access to the IEA’s “real” knowledge and opinions. If it was not, what is the point of having a “special relationship”?

But even if the UK was in on the game, what could it do about it? If it set its energy policies according to the ‘real’ data, its actions would have made it plain that it regarded the IEA’s public data as bogus.

But if the UK set its energy policies in line with the IEA’s public position, it was being either very gullible or prepared to screw itself handsomely (by not preparing sufficiently), purely in order not to rock the Anglo-US loveboat.

Everything about the UK’s economic, foreign and energy policy says we did the latter. If so, what were we promised in return? That Uncle Sam would pull us out of the economic/energy hole we were digging for ourselves? And with what? Iraqi oil?