The
Starting Point: The 7th International Energy Forum Meeting
The end of
the 1990s was characterized by unusually high volatility of oil prices. The lack
of transparent and reliable oil statistics was identified as an aggravating
factor for the volatility in addition to factors such as political tensions and
economic shocks. The efforts to improve the availability and reliability of oil
data began among producers and consumers, who recognized the need for more data
transparency in the oil market. Ministers at the 7th International Energy Forum
in
Riyadh
made clear their support for better
data and urged a global response to the challenge.
From the 7th
to the 9th International Energy Forum: Exercise, Initiative and
Database
Six international organizations – APEC,
Eurostat, IEA, OLADE, OPEC and UNSD – took up the challenge, combined their
efforts, involved their Member Countries and, in April 2001 launched the Joint
Oil Data Exercise. 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 organizations 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 organization’s member
countries through a harmonized questionnaire on 42 key oil data
points.
The progress was immediate: Within six months,
55 countries had already participated in the exercise. Six months later there
were over 70 participating countries, representing 90 per cent of global oil
supply and demand.
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At the
8th International Energy Forum in
Osaka
in 2002, Ministers
commended the work, reaffirmed their political support and urged the
organizations to pursue their effort.
Having
obtained the political mandate to reinforce their work, the six organizations
obtained agreement from their Member Countries to make the Exercise a permanent
reporting mechanism; the Exercise was then renamed the Joint Oil Data Initiative(JODI).
As process gathered momentum, more countries
participated and their submissions were more timely and complete, while quality
improved. It became, therefore, desirable to assemble all the information in a
compatible form: The JODI World Database was born.
Participants
in the 5th 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 is still far from perfection. The IEF Secretariat,
which took over the co-ordination of JODI in January 2005, and the six
organizations are fully aware of the limits and limitations of the database at
this stage of its development. However, since transparency is central to the
initiative, the organizations have undertaken to respond positively to the
request expressed at the 5th JODI Conference that the database is made
accessible to the public.
As quality of data is a major concern to the
organizations, and in order to further improve transparency, it was felt helpful
to provide a guide to data quality. This was not an easy matter, due to initial
differences in methodology and a lack of comparable sources of information in
some countries.
When assessing the data, priority was given to
the Top 30 oil producer and consumer countries accounting for around 90 percent
of world production and consumption, although data from all 92 participating
countries are included.
In October
2005 the organizations agreed to open the JODI World Database on the occasion of
the inauguration of the IEFS premises by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,
King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud on
19 November 2005. This decision was taken with the full
knowledge that users might be disappointed, as not all the data for all the
flows, products and countries are always available.
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The Way Forward
The
Challenge
Many challenges remain. The
database is still work in progress, but already for many countries, especially
for the Top 30 producers and consumers, timeliness, coverage and reliability are
of reasonable levels.
The challenge for the
organizations now is to increase the coverage to other countries, to reduce the
delay in data submissions and to further enhance the data quality. However, the
database does not only belong to the organizations, it is up to all the
countries, oil companies and analysts to participate and to improve the
information.
The organizations are very
committed to this objective 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.
