4 May 2013, The Economist

Markets can misprice risk, as investors in subprime mortgages discovered in 2008. Several recent reports suggest that markets are now overlooking the risk of “unburnable carbon”. The share prices of oil, gas and coal companies depend in part on their reserves. The more fossil fuels a firm has underground, the more valuable its shares. But what if some of those reserves can never be dug up and burned? […] Existing fossil-fuel reserves already contain far more carbon than that. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in its “World Energy Outlook”, total proven international reserves contain 2,860GTCO2—almost three times the carbon budget. The report refers to the excess as “unburnable carbon”.

24 April 2013, Anchorage Daily News

In an interview, Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency, predicted that the United States as well as China, Europe, Japan and India would institute rules and standards to increase energy efficiency in vehicles, appliances and industry, but such advances would not be enough to stem significant climate change over the coming decades, which he said would be "deleterious for the planet." He said he expected that increasing gas production over the next decade would give the United States a competitive energy price advantage over Europe and Japan. He added, "The U.S. oil import bill will go down and the trade balance will be an asset rather than a burden to the United States," as it has been over the last few decades.

23 March 2013, The New York Times

Fatih Birol, chief economist at the 28-nation International Energy Agency, which includes the United States, said that reducing fossil fuel use was crucial to curbing global temperature rise, but added that improving the energy efficiency of homes, vehicles and industry was an easier short-term strategy. He noted that the 19.5 million residents of New York State consume as much energy as the 800 million in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) and that, even with President Obama’s automotive fuel standards, European vehicles were on average more than 30 percent more fuel efficient than American ones.

19 March 2013, The New York Times

Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency in Paris, points out that if civilization is to avoid catastrophic climate change, only about one third of the 3,000 gigatons of CO2 contained in the world’s known reserves of oil, gas and coal can be released into the atmosphere.

17 March 2013, The Financial Times

According to the International Energy Agency, a quarter of Iraqi oil, about 2m barrels a day, will be heading for China by 2035. “A new trade axis is being formed between Baghdad and Beijing,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist. Analysts say state companies are much less likely than the oil majors to be deterred by low fees and low returns: for them, the key is access to Iraq’s hydrocarbon resources, and the off-take deals that allow them to export crude. But ultimately, the winner of the past decade has been the Iraqi state. The IEA predicts Baghdad stands to gain almost $5tn in revenues from oil exports to 2035 – offering a “transformative opportunity” for the economy.

8 March 2013, Forbes - interview with Dr. Fatih Birol

Fatih Birol is chief economist at the International Energy Agency, which works to ensure energy security for its 28 member countries, including the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan, and publishes the World Energy Outlook – the top strategic guide to global energy markets. Birol chairs the Davos (World Economic Forum) Energy Advisory Board and was named by Forbes as one of the most influential people in the world in energy. Birol recently shared his thoughts with Ensia and Terry Waghorn of Forbes on climate change and our global energy future.

3 March 2013, The Economist

In 2012 Iraq produced over 3m barrels a day (b/d) for the first time since 1990, and it can undoubtedly produce more. […] The International Energy Agency, a rich-world club, reckons that in the most favourable circumstances production might triple to just over 9m b/d by 2020, but that doubling to 6.1m b/d is more plausible—and that if things go wrong, output might only reach 4m b/d.

27 February 2013, Le Monde

L'Agence internationale de l'énergie (AIE) […] a observé qu'entre 2002 et 2010, les groupes chinois ont réalisé 43 investissements dans le pétrole et le gaz à l'étranger pour un montant évalué à 65 milliards de dollars. Comme le soulignait Fatih Birol, le chef économiste de l'AIE dans le Financial Times du 19 février, " la Chine est sur le point de devenir un pays majeur pour la production hors de ses frontières ".

25 February 2013, The Australian

"The World Energy Outlook finds that the extraordinary growth in oil and natural gas output in the US will mean a sea-change in global energy flows," the IEA said at the launch of its report. The IEA now expects the US to become a net exporter of natural gas by 2020 and to become almost self-sufficient in energy in net terms by 2035.

19 February 2013, The Financial Times

China is set to become a major producing country outside of its borders,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, told the Financial Times on the sidelines of IP Week, an annual gathering of the oil industry in London. “A significant part of the increased foreign production comes from [merger and acquisition] transactions last year.”