Chris Wright: IEA’s Oil Demand Forecast Is ‘Nonsensical,’ Punishes Developing World

Energy Secretary Chris Wright is blasting the International Energy Agency (IEA) for pushing what he calls “nonsensical” oil demand projections that ignore decades of growth and risk condemning billions of people to energy poverty.

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Wright criticized the International Energy Agency, which receives funding from U.S. taxpayers. “They used to provide a very important source. Now they’ve become political,” he said. “They project sources of people’s dreams or green wishes,” including projecting that global oil demand will peak by 2030.

“Oil demand has grown about 1.1 percent compound annual growth rate over the last 50 years. Total energy growth is 1.6 percent, 1.1 percent with oil,” Wright said. “If you look at just the last 20 years, it’s 1.2 percent. The rate of growth of oil isn’t even slowing.”

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“They’re just nonsensical,” he continued. “They’re just saying to those 7 billion people, a billion of us are going to keep living these well-energized lives, but you guys, you’ve got to stay where you are.”

Wright warned that the IEA, along with the Department of Energy’s own Energy Information Administration, has become politicized and detached from market realities.

Wright cited indoor air pollution from traditional cooking methods as an example of what billions of people still endure without access to modern energy.

“Two billion people cook their daily meals the way our ancestors did, burning wood or dung indoors,” Wright said. “Two to 3 million easily preventable deaths from that indoor air pollution.”

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He also warned that wealthy countries have actively blocked energy development in poorer nations, citing a major U.N. climate summit as an example.

Wright pointed to what he called “the climate gathering in Glasgow” and said that 19 wealthy nations pledged to stop financing hydrocarbon development in the developing world.

Wright said he is reversing course on what he called “the most sinister goal ever” — Net Zero 2050.

“We have been in the midst globally of the greatest malinvestment in the history of humanity,” he said. “Trillions of dollars have been spent to save the planet. The biggest dollars by far have been wind, solar, batteries, and expanding transmission lines. That’s 3 to 10 trillion, depending on how you count. It has got to just a little over 3 percent of global energy, and everywhere there is meaningful penetration, higher electricity prices, and deindustrialization.”

Wright said Trump’s energy policies helped shield global markets from turmoil.

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“Today, the price of oil is lower than it was when bullets started flying [in the Middle East],” Wright said. “This is a great testament to President Trump’s agenda of energy dominance. Not only is the United States by far the largest producer of oil in the world today and by a factor of two, the biggest producer of natural gas in the world today. We have a rational policy around energy.”

He said other countries are taking notice. On Inauguration Night, India’s foreign minister asked Wright if the U.S. would remain a long-term exporter of natural gas.

“We had become this huge producer of gas, we’d started exporting a lot of gas,” Wright said. “The world loved that. And then we said, well maybe not. We may not export anymore. We’re going to pause. That’s just a chilling signal to energy markets around the world. But that kind of nonsense is gone.”

He highlighted how America’s energy decisions will shape its future in artificial intelligence.

“AI is the next Manhattan Project,” Wright said. “We cannot be second. We cannot be behind in China in artificial intelligence. We have a lead today. We have the best companies. We have a lead in science. We have a lead in our computing power right now, but China has been building energy systems, growing their electricity grid massively for decades. We have smothered ours. We have to reverse that. If we don’t, we will not lead in AI, and we will go into a very, very different world. But we can win, and we must win and stay the lead in AI. Thank God President Trump got elected.”