Demand for energy will increase by 40 percent between now and 2030, yet an insider at the International Energy Association (IEA) warns that there just isn’t enough oil in the world to supply that need.

Presuming alternative energy sources aren’t easily developed or fall short of projections, and new oil production falters, much higher prices are inevitable, as experts including T. Boone Pickens have warned.

Pickens has repeatedly said that $300-a-barrel oil is in our future.

According to the agency’s just-released World Energy Outlook 2009, global oil consumption over the next five years will grow to just 88 million barrels a day, well below the 94 million barrels a day the agency forecast a year ago for total demand in 2015.

The energy watchdog’s figures are overly optimistic, according to a whistleblower within the agency, who describes IEA estimates of remaining oil supplies as more fiction than fact.

"Many inside the organization believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90 million to 95 million barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further,” the source told the UK Guardian.

The agency says a new global deal to limit carbon emissions could sharply curtail the growth in oil consumption in the years ahead as alternative energy resources and efficiency measures are tapped, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The report concludes that global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases could help restrain future crude oil price rises.

To do so, the global economy will need to invest $10.5 trillion in low-carbon energy technologies and energy efficiency to combat projected oil production declines, says the agency.