47 Quotes by Fatih Birol

Saudi Arabia has the oil reserves and the domestic capital to boost their production. But they might not want to increase their investments to boost production. They may want to influence the world price environment.

The oil infrastructure is robust enough to deal with a 5% cut in supply.

It's not about rocks or about reserves, it's about investment policy.

The issue in the oil business today is not the reserves but the money, the investment decisions, the investment climate.

Energy is significantly underpriced in many parts of the world, leading to wasteful consumption, price volatility and fuel smuggling. It's also undermining the competitiveness of renewables.

Energy markets can be thought of as suffering from appendicitis due to fossil fuel subsidies. They need to be removed for a healthy energy economy.

Just 8% of the $409bn spent on fossil-fuel subsidies in 2010 went to the poorest 20% of the population.

We need a universally accepted definition of reserves reporting.

If production does not increase in Iraq in an exponential way between now and 2015, we have a very big problem, even if Saudi Arabia meets its obligations. The figures are very simple, you do not need to be an expert. It is enough to know how to do a subtraction. China will grow very quickly, India also, and even Saudi Arabia projections of the 3 Mb/day will not be enough to meet the rise of Chinese demand.