Fake units in a major global energy report

In June 2016, the British oil and gas group BP released the 65th Statistical Review of World Energy ( BP Statistical Review of World Energy ) - the only publication in the world that publishes statistics on reserves, production and demand of all types of energy sources from year to year. The leading world agencies and mass media, such as Bloomberg , Financial Times, Kommersant and others, refer to this statistic in their research. Most of the data published in the BP Statistical Review is given in MTOE (Million Tonnes of Oil Equivalent, million tons of oil equivalent). These units of measurement from the report can be called fake, since they are denoted in the same way as conventional MTOEs, but their size differs by about 2.63 times.
Recall that the generally accepted MTOE is equal to 11.63 terawatt-hours (1 toe = 11.63 megawatt-hour (MWh)). One MTOE from the report is approximately 0.38 common MTOEs or 4.42 terawatt hours.

As a result, for the reader, the data presented in the report turns out to be overestimated by 2.63 times, if he certainly does not read the small print at the bottom of the page. There, the authors explain, though very clumsily, that they use not common, but other units of measure, the exact value of which cannot be known anywhere, but an approximate value 2.63 times less than the generally accepted ones. These explanations in small print look like this:
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This is page A2 of the solar energy report . Here the authors of the report propose to transfer the terawatts to the MTOE not according to the generally accepted coefficient of 11.63, but according to their own.

Further more interesting. P.44:



Here the authors propose to burn not only oil, but also units of energy measurement at TPPs. Schoolchildren for a similar phrase in the control of physics usually put "2."

Further on page 41 of their report, the authors put their fake MTOE with tons.



The result obtained from the addition of energy and mass is called “primary energy” and is nominated in MTOE.

The result is that the authors of the BP report using fake units. rev. managed to mislead a lot of world analysts, journalists and ordinary people. For example, one of the articles describes that global coal consumption in 2015 decreased by 71 MTOE , which of course is not true, since the author of the article did not read or understand the small print in the BP report. In fact, from the report it follows that coal consumption decreased by 2.63 times less (71 / 2.63 = 27 MTOE).

For those who still do not believe that a large international corporation can use fake units in its report, I propose to check on the example of figures for the Russian hydropower industry, taken from Wikipedia. Production in 2007 amounted to 177,700,000 megawatt-hours, which in the converter of values gives 15.3 MTOE. The BP report on page 36 is a figure overestimated several times.



In conclusion, I suggest readers check out other figures from the BP report expressed in the MTOE, comparing them with other sources.