World Energy Outlook 2008

Are world oil and gas supplies under threat? How could a new international accord on stabilising greenhouse-gas emissions affect global energy markets? World Energy Outlook 2008 answers these and other pertinent questions. WEO 2008 draws on the experience of another turbulent year in energy markets to provide new energy projections to 2030, by region and by fuel. It incorporates the latest data and policies. WEO 2008 focuses on two pressing issues: prospects for oil and gas production, and post-2012 climate scenarios. Through field-by-field analysis of production trends at 800 of the world’s largest oilfields, an assessment of the potential for finding and developing new reserves and a bottom-up analysis of upstream costs and investment, WEO 2008 takes a hard look at future global oil and gas supply. Regarding the climate scenarios, two different scenarios are assessed, one in which the atmospheric concentration of emissions is stabilised at 550 parts per million (ppm) in CO2 equivalent terms and the second at the still more ambitious level of 450 ppm. The implications for energy demand, prices, investment, air pollution and energy security are fully spelt out. The ground-breaking analysis of WEO 2008 will enable policy makers to distill the key choices as they strive to agree in Copenhagen in 2009 on a post-Kyoto climate framework.