Background

When the Joint Oil Data Initiative (JODI) was first launched in 2001, the primary goal was not to build a database but to raise the awareness of all oil market players of the need for more transparency in oil market data.

The first priority of the six international organizations supporting JODI (APEC, Eurostat, IEA, OLADE, OPEC and UNSD) was to assess the oil data situation in their respective member countries in order to better qualify and quantify the lack of transparency. The assessment included the collection of monthly oil statistics from each organisation’s member countries through a harmonized questionnaire on 42 key oil data points (see also ‘Questionnaire’ section).

As the process gathered momentum, more countries participated, their submissions were more timely and complete, while quality improved. It became therefore desirable to assemble all the information in a comparable form: the JODI World Database was born.

Participants in the 5^th JODI Conference in October 2004 then strongly recommended that this joint global database should be made freely accessible to all - organizations, countries, industry, analysts and others.

From concept to launch

Transparency does not happen overnight and despite the significant progress achieved since its inception, the database was still far from being complete and perfect. The IEF Secretariat, which took over the co-ordination of JODI in January 2005, together with the six organizations running the initiative were fully aware of the limitations of the database at this stage in its development. However, since transparency is central to the initiative, the organizations had undertaken to respond positively to the request expressed at the 5^th JODI Conference that the database be made accessible to the public.

In October 2005 the organizations agreed to open the JODI World Database on the occasion of the inauguration by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia of the IEFS premises on 19 November 2005.

The JODI World Database

This database should in no way be seen as a final product. The database evolves continuously. The quality of the data is assessed on a continuous basis too (see also ‘Database’ section). Other flows already collected through the JODI questionnaire, like imports and exports, will be included at a later stage. Making the data available was only the first step towards more transparency.

The database consists of:

• Seven product categories: Crude Oil, LPG, Gasoline, Kerosene, Diesel Oil, Fuel Oil and Total Oil,

• Six flows: Production, Demand, Refinery Intake and Output, Closing Stock Levels and Stock Change.

• Data in three different units: barrels, tons and litres

• Data for more than 90 participating countries

• Data from January 2002 to one month-old.

The current features of the database enable users to quickly access and view data from different perspectives. Users can consult metadata, select and filter user-defined views, search for specific data, export data in multiple formats and visualize data through interactive charting (see also ‘First Time User’).

Also a unique colour cell feature provides users with information on comparability of data with other sources.

View of the on-line JODI World Database

What’s next?

The participants in the 6^th International JODI Conference, that took place in Riyadh in November 2006, have identified a list of prioritized actions to be taken to further improve data quality and extend the Initiative. These actions are:

• To continue to improve completeness, timeliness and reliability of the data;

• To work more closely with a wider range of both data providers and users in order to improve the usefulness of the Initiative and the entire database;

• To extend the JODI questionnaire by disaggregating the existing flows and products.

After the training workshop for Latin America region in August 2006, the JODI partners continued implementing training workshops in 2007 on oil statistics for the participating countries of Middle East and Africa regions. Another challenge for the organizations now is also to increase the coverage to other countries.

To further enhance data quality, a JODI internship programme started in 2007 and will proceed in 2008.

The JODI partner organizations submitted to the participating countries/economies an expanded JODI questionnaire with additional flows and products. Since March 2007, an exercise is running, for a trial period, to assess how many participating countries are in position to fill in the expanded questionnaire, with the aim of evaluating this exercise at the next JODI conference that should take place at the end of 2008.

The organizations are very committed to these objectives but they cannot do it alone. They need full co-operation from countries and the oil industry. They also need comments from the users, be it praise or criticism and of course any suggestions are welcome.

The opening of the JODI database to the public was not the final goal of this initiative, it was just the beginning.