Singapore (Platts)--17Nov2009/556 am EST/1056 GMT

The International Energy Agency is set to further expand the number of countries it is engaging with outside the OECD, convinced that it needs to coordinate a global approach to the challenges facing the energy sector, the Paris-based organization's Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.

"We are saying we are a global energy watchdog ... not only for the rich countries," Tanaka told Platts in an interview in Singapore Monday evening, protesting at the popular media tag for the IEA, "a watchdog for the rich countries."

Having wooed the big oil producer Russia and major consumers China and India in recent years with an eye on getting their supply and demand figures, the IEA is now targeting collaboration with the non-OECD members of G20, specifically Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Mexico, said Tanaka, who was headed to Jakarta after his stop in Singapore this week.

China, India and Russia for the first time participated in the IEA's biennial ministerial meeting in Paris mid-October, where the organization decided "to create international partnership for energy and sustainability by inviting non-member countries to work closer with us," Tanaka said.

Ministers and vice-ministers from the three guest countries held frank and open discussions on common issues with their counterparts from the 28 IEA members at the October meeting, but "the [IEA] ministers want larger relations with the countries," said Tanaka.

The IEA is planning a bigger gathering in the autumn of 2010, with several invitees from the G20, to deliberate on the twin topics of energy security and sustainability, Tanaka said. "We need more data, transparency. We need more analysis," he stressed.

STILL STRUGGLING FOR CHINESE DATA

On the IEA's success so far in getting Russia as an important oil producer and India and China as major consumers to share more of their demand and supply figures, Tanaka said the initiative was "moving toward a better direction," but the agency wants faster progress, and improvements in the quality and quantity of data.

On its part, the agency has invited statisticians from China and India to train them up on "coherent" gathering of data, the IEA chief said.

A major recent setback, which Tanaka described as worrying and disappointing, was the Chinese official news agency Xinhua abruptly ceasing its publication of figures on commercial oil stockpiles of the two main state-owned oil giants PetroChina and Sinopec. Though the IEA gets some data from the Chinese government, "public data [of the kind Xinhua publishes] is also helpful for us to make a good judgment," Tanaka said.

The IEA, though, has shied away from asking Beijing directly for the data or seeking an explanation. "They may have their own reasons ... but it is disappointing," said Tanaka.

HOSTS IPEEC SECRETARIAT

The IEA is working more closely with the G8 through the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation or IPEEC, which the G8 energy ministers established in May this year, Tanaka said. The IEA hosts the IPEEC secretariat, and has already begun sharing its information and analysis with the G8 members.

The IEA is also planning a workshop next year to discuss the phasing out of fuel subsidies as part of overall issue of more efficient use of energy, in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund and OPEC, Tanaka said. The workshop, the first of its kind, would probably be held in February, in Paris, he said.

Among the new initiatives lined up for 2010 is a "technical workshop" the IEA plans to co-host with Japan to discuss the need for greater price transparency and what Tanaka called the process of "price formation" in the oil markets with regulators such as the Commodities and Futures Trade Commission in the US and the UK, which are moving toward regulation of the over-the-counter markets.

--Vandana Hari, vandana@platts.com