Since its creation more than 40 years ago, the International Energy Agency has side-stepped predictions of OPEC crude production, acutely aware that the producer group’s output quotas made the job at best tricky, at worst politically inexpedient. But this may be about to change. Next month, the IEA is considering publishing “scenario” forecasts of OPEC crude production for the first time in a move likely to be seen as a nod to the cartel’s radical new free-wheeling output policy. The IEA, set up in response to the 1973 oil shock, is also rethinking longstanding, and much-cited, forecasts for the expected demand for OPEC’s crude. From next month, the IEA’s closely-watched monthly Oil Market Report could contain a scenario for OPEC crude output through to the end of 2017, Neil Atkinson, head of the IEA’s oil market division, told Platts. The change is being considered amid growing evidence that OPEC’s […]