omething is not adding up.

The International Energy Agency, Europe’s equivalent of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in a report to the 26 counties it advises and serves said that:

“Global oil demand is expected to rise 1.8 percent this year, to 85.72 million barrels a day, the International Energy Agency said today in a monthly report, little changed from its previous assessment.” Bloomberg News, May 11, 2007.

I like that “little changed from its previous assessment” part. Why no change in the assessment? We have 2 months of empirical data for 2007, and 4 months of price and supply anecdotal data that should tell them they might want to reassess that assessment (from the department of redundancy department). You see, global oil demand of 85.72 million barrels per day this year, when the average production per day has been 84.239 would seem to present a problem, like falling inventories and rising prices (sound familiar?), as we seem to be short 1.5 million bpd. Which would mean that in order to meet the IEA “assessment” world oil production would need to average roughly 86.00 million bpd for the March-December period. I’ve got a better shot of being Hillary’s running mate.

Oh, I forgot to mention… The U.S. Government wants to increase its holdings in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (the new swing producer, and who I have heard now referred to as the Political Petroleum Reserve). So make that 86.1 million bpd… Actually I doubt they would risk taking 100,000 bpd off the U.S. market – the effect on prices could be unacceptable politically – an amount equal to less than .005 of the liquid petroleum America consumes daily. THAT’S HOW TIGHT OUR SUPPLY SITUATION IS.