Meetings of the International Energy Agency – june 2019
On 26 and 27 June 2019, our colleagues participated in meetings of the International Energy Agency (IEA) working groups in Paris - Standing Group on Emergency Questions (SEQ) and Standing Group on Oil Markets (SOM).
SOM meeting focused mainly on the current situation on the world oil market. Crude oil prices are currently stabilized with relatively low volatility. The IEA Secretariat has addressed the forecast of crude oil consumption for the next two years. China has become the biggest crude oil consumer and it is assumed that this country's growth in consumption will continue. This information was followed by a presentation of the IEA on the world gas market situation.
The special block focused on the development of crude oil demand worldwide in view of the anticipated increase in the efficiency of classic combustion engines and the development of electric vehicles. Energy efficiency is a key mechanism that limits oil consumption in cars - it is estimated that by 2040 no vehicles with a fuel consumption of more than 6.5 liters / 100 km will be sold. In case of the anticipated development of passenger but also freight and bus transport in the form of electric vehicles, it would be expected that in the long run, oil consumption would be reduced by up to two thirds. This requires extensive investment in the development of electricity generation and distribution networks. In conclusion, the IEA presented concrete initiatives to promote energy efficiency policies.
At the beginning of the 158-th meeting of the SEQ, the evaluation of the compliance of the member countries with the storage obligations was presented. The Slovak Republic is continuously fulfilling its commitments, currently at approximately 141 days of average daily net imports (stocks owned by the Emergency Oil Stock Agency together with commercial stocks of businesses).
The focus of this SEQ session was the assessment of oil supply shortages by the Druzhba pipeline in V4 countries and Germany due to organic chloride contamination. Representatives of the countries concerned have presented the concrete steps they have taken to face the state of oil emergencies as well as the valuable lessons learned. All countries have managed the one-month oil outage successfully. Thus, in practice, it was possible to test existing practices and emergency plans in these countries. Based on the presented procedures, it must be stated that, due to the maintenance of emergency stocks, the population of the countries concerned did not register a fuel shortage and the standard flow of the economy was not disrupted.