Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso is leading an effort to pressure the International Energy Agency to reverse its prediction that the world could soon reach “peak oil.”
The Paris-based IEA is an independent agency that provides global energy analyses to dozens of member countries. For years, IEA has produced reams of data showing that clean energy is replacing and undercutting global fossil fuel demand — which it predicts will peak around 2030.
Barrasso’s push to shape IEA’s conclusions is backed by a Texas-based think tank whose former employees now hold key positions in the Trump administration. The National Center for Energy Analytics has called IEA’s global energy outlooks “dangerously misleading.”
“The world actually uses more oil than they imagine, and the supply is short,” Mark Mills, the center’s executive director, said in an interview. “The problem is that these forecasts and scenarios have been used to determine either the discouragement of, or outright cancellation of, investments in oil development.”
IEA’s outlooks influence both industry and governments. Its analyses and findings are often cited in government decisions — and can make it harder or easier for energy projects to obtain financing or permitting approval. The Biden administration, for example, referred to IEA’s prediction of a future slump in global fossil fuel demand to justify its pause on approving new liquefied natural gas export permits.
The U.S. provides about a quarter of IEA’s funding from member countries, giving it significant influence over the agency.
Barrasso and other GOP lawmakers on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee laid out their aims for IEA in a late December report. They argued that the agency has veered too far from its energy security roots and is focused on an “unachievable” clean energy transition. The agency “must make it loud and clear that it does not endorse ending investments in oil, natural gas, and coal,” the report said.
The Senate is expected to take action on the report’s findings in the coming months, though it is not clear which reforms it will seek. In his position as Senate majority whip — the chamber’s second-highest-ranking Republican — Barrasso is part of the leadership that sets the legislative agenda.
IEA spokesperson Jethro Mullen said the agency worked with the first Trump administration and expects to continue to do so. But he disputed the notion that IEA relies on unrealistic data and said the agency “welcomes opportunities for dialogue on how to improve IEA analysis and scenario design.”
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.), who is the former CEO of two clean energy companies, said any efforts to shift IEA’s focus or slant energy analysis to favor fossil fuels would blind the world to the need for increased clean energy. And that, he argued, could have disastrous economic impacts.
“The consequence of this is that we are morons,” Casten said. “We are the most powerful country in the world, the biggest economy in the world, and we’re going to willingly decide to be morons, like there is no nice way to put that, and I’m doing my best not to drop a bunch of F-bombs here.”
Barrasso did not respond to requests for comment. The White House and the Department of Energy also did not respond to requests for comment. DOE houses the Energy Information Administration, which is the U.S. counterpart to IEA.
Energy delusions?
The National Center for Energy Analytics was created in March to “inject more realism into national energy policy debates” — namely, by asserting that the world can’t and won’t transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy. Scientists say the world must shift away from fossil fuels to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change, which is already driving more frequent heat waves and extreme weather.
The center is a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that has received funding from fossil fuel companies and routinely promotes climate disinformation as part of its mission to battle government regulations.
Last week, President Donald Trump quietly nominated Tristan Abbey, a senior fellow at the center, to serve as director of DOE’s Energy Information Administration. Abbey served on Trump’s National Security Council in his first term as the director for energy and environment and is a former Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee staffer.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation, meanwhile, has an outsize influence in Trump’s Washington. One of its former leaders, Brooke Rollins, is the nominee to be Agriculture secretary. Another former CEO of the foundation, Kevin Roberts, now heads the Heritage Foundation, which produced the Project 2025 playbook currently shaping many Trump administration decisions. Additionally, one of Trump’s top donors, oil billionaire Tim Dunn, is the foundation’s longtime vice chair.
The foundation’s National Center for Energy Analytics released a report last month titled “Energy Delusions: Peak Oil Forecasts” that criticizes IEA’s scenarios.
It argues that the agency’s prediction that the world is approaching peak oil — the point at which demand starts to decline — is detrimental to the expansion of fossil fuel production. That matters because IEA “continues to influence not only trillions of dollars in investment decisions but also government policies with far-reaching geopolitical consequences,” the report said.
But Mullen of IEA said the report is “full of rudimentary errors and fundamental misrepresentations about both energy systems in general and IEA modelling in particular.”
“Key among them is the claim that the IEA’s core scenario assumes the full implementation of pledges made under the Paris Agreement,” Mullen said in a statement. “This is entirely false.”
Republican lawmakers have accused IEA of relying on what they call aspirational energy policy — such as agreements countries make at international climate talks every year. The December report led by Barrasso argued that using climate policy targets skews IEA’s findings, which it said are “tailor-made to discourage investment in oil and natural gas while promoting decarbonization targets few believe will happen.”
IEA routinely maps global energy demand and policies. It tracks a range of future scenarios, including one for business as usual and another that shows how climate and energy policies, as well as other influences, could impact demand for fossil fuels and renewable energy. IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook, distributed in eight languages, is particularly influential; the most recent version, released in October, outlined how geopolitical tensions and Russia’s war on Ukraine threatened energy security and slowed energy implementation.
Barrasso’s approach was backed by Kathleen Sgamma, a longtime oil and gas advocate, whom Trump named to lead the Bureau of Land Management. She pointed to U.S. funding for IEA as the tool that gives the Trump administration and Congress leverage over the agency.
“Considering that the U.S. provides substantial funding to IEA, Senator Barrasso’s staff report has given policymakers an opportunity to push for meaningful reform and ensure the agency returns to its original purpose of providing data the world can rely on,” she wrote in an editorial last week for Real Clear Energy. “As he did with the World Economic Forum last week, President Trump has the opportunity to speak truth to another international organization that needs to get back to ensuring the world has affordable, reliable energy for all.”
There is wide support among energy analysts and industry for fact-based reports not beholden to any political ideology or policy goals, said Adam Sieminski, who headed the EIA in the Obama administration. It’s not unreasonable to seek some of the reforms that Trump allies have called for, he said.
But any efforts to pressure IEA to discard clean energy analysis — by withholding funding, for example — could significantly damage the agency’s reputation, he said. Trump has already broken with other international efforts that he doesn’t agree with, including the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization.
“I think what you need is for the public to be reassured that the analysis coming from the IEA and the EIA is fact-based and not being driven by a policy agenda,” he said.
Reach Scott Waldman on Signal at Waldman.04.
