RIYADH, 28 November 2006 — Many giant energy-producing and consuming countries, including China, India and Iraq, have failed to submit data to the Joint Oil Data Initiative (JODI). The failure has hampered immediate plans by the JODI’s partner organizations to improve and ensure the quality and timeliness of oil data which is a key component for making investment and policy decisions. The political will, however, is there on the part of these countries, which may begin submitting data in the foreseeable future.
“A total of 92 countries are currently submitting monthly data for this highly-acclaimed initiative,” said Ambassador Arne Walther, secretary general of the International Energy Forum (IEF). “The challenge is now to include more countries, reduce delay in data submissions and enhance data quality despite the fact that the coverage and reliability of data is at a reasonable level, even today,” said the IEF chief, here Sunday night.
Walther was at the conclusion of the two-day JODI conference. The press conference was also addressed by Fuad Al-Zayer, OPEC’s chief statistician; Jean-Yves Garnier of IEA, Dr Said Nachel, IEF energy director; Karoly Kovacs of the United Nations Statistics Division, Pekka Loesoenen of Eurostat, Shigeru Kimura of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and Mauricio Garron of Latin American Energy Organization (OLADE).
Referring to the outcome of the JODI conference, Ambassador Walther and Garnier said that “the JODI has received strong political support from the participating countries and its six partner organizations.” “Any country that wishes to join JODI may contact the international organization to which it is a member, either APEC, Eurostat, IEA, OLADE, OPEC or UN Statistics Division,” they said.
“Moreover, we have identified areas to improve JODI, which should be extended to other forms of energy like LPG, kerosene and Total oil,” added OPEC official Al-Zayer. A proposal was also made to translate JODI Manual into other languages such as Chinese, French and Russian. “An agreement has also been reached to expand the data questionnaire,” said Al-Zayer, adding that the organizations agreed to limit the number of questions to a minimum, when the JODI was first launched.
In fact, the initial objective was not to start a new data collection system, but to measure how many countries can submit monthly data on a regular basis. “The JODI has evolved considerably and substantially since then, prompting the six partner organizations to broaden the questionnaire,” said the energy experts. “The only requirement, however, is to regularly submit monthly data in the standard table format to one or more of the energy organizations,” they said.
