The International Energy Agency (IEA) came into being after the oil crisis of the 1970s.

The IEA is dedicated to preventing disruptions in the supply of oil, as well as acting as an information source on statistics about the international oil market and other energy sectors. They have a secondary role in promoting and developing alternate energy sources, rational energy policies, and multinational energy technology co-operation. - Wikipedia

Essentially, the IEA are tasked with being a well-informed fortune-teller - specialising in oil supply predictions. Today the IEA came out with a rather solemn message:

IEA member countries shown in green

"The results of our analysis are quite strong," said Lawrence Eagles, head of the IEA's Oil Industry and Markets Division. "Something needs to happen."

"Either we need to have more supplies coming on stream or we need to have lower demand growth."

"Despite four years of high oil prices, this report sees increasing market tightness beyond 2010," the IEA said. - Reuters

They even went so far as to, softly, use the 'P' word (for Peak Oil) - a dirty word in oil production circles:

"Certainly our forecast suggests that the non-OPEC, conventional crude component of global production appears, for now, to have reached an effective plateau, rather than a peak," the report said. - Reuters

As 'peak oilers' have expressed, energy demands worldwide are on a rapid growth incline, and this is occuring just as oil supplies are showing signs of waning.

Global oil demand is forecast to expand by 1.9 million barrels a day, or 2.2 percent a year on average, reaching 95.8 million barrels a day by 2012, the IEA said. The fastest growth will occur in Asia and the Middle East, it said....

The report also showed that Chinese oil demand will reach almost 10 million barrels a day in 2012, compared with its domestic production that year of about 3.9 million barrels a day. - Bloomberg

Just to put IEA predictions into context - they are normally famously optimistic in their assumptions about oil supply. For them to even hint at a peak is somewhat of an internal epiphany. Speaking at the World Assembly on Renewable Energy at the World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE) in Bonn, in November 2005, the Swiss MP Rudolf Rechensteiner had this to say about a previous IEA report:

You find everything and nothing in the foggy IEA report, you might even find renewables. But the report is confusing and contradictory and the main objective seems to [be to] prove that the future will be a repetition of the past.

It is difficult for IEA to accept the obvious, that most of the World's oil has been found. - Energy Bulletin