Joint Organisations Data Initiative

The Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) is a globally recognised collaborative effort delivering monthly standardised data on oil and gas production, consumption, stocks, and trade across major energy-producing and consuming countries. Supported by leading international organisations, JODI’s transparency initiative strengthens informed policy decisions, market monitoring, and energy security assessments for governments, industry stakeholders, and analysts worldwide.

JODI is a concrete outcome of the producer-consumer dialogue. In 2001, six pioneering organisations (APEC, Eurostat, IEA, OLADE, OPEC, and UNSD) answered the call by Energy Ministers at the 7th IEF Ministerial in 2000 in Riyadh to address the lack of data transparency in oil markets, which was seen as a cause of excessive price fluctuations, and established the Joint Oil Data Exercise (JODE). The Initiative was established as a permanent mechanism in 2003, and JODI—the Joint Oil Data Initiative—was born. Following endorsement by Ministers, the IEF Secretariat assumed the role and responsibility as the co-ordinator of JODI in January 2005.

The JODI Oil Database was publicly released in 2005 and enhanced with additional data in 2009. The JODI partners’ successful establishment of oil data provision architecture inspired IEF Ministers to call for an extension of the Initiative to cover natural gas (JODI-Gas). To accommodate progress on these new challenges beyond oil data transparency, the seven JODI partner organisations rebranded JODI as the Joint Organisations Data Initiative and welcomed the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) as a new partner organisation. The JODI Gas Database was publicly released in 2014.

JODI provides a reliable, freely accessible and global database of key energy statistics unlike any other in the world. Through the use of official national data, which can be difficult, if not impossible, to access through alternative avenues, JODI offers a fair assessment of global oil and gas consumption and production on a monthly basis. Data uncertainty can be detrimental to fair market operations. By improving data transparency, undue price volatility can be moderated, increasing investor confidence and contributing to greater stability in energy markets worldwide. JODI, as both a set of databases and a broader collaborative effort, is instrumental to the pursuit of complete energy data transparency.

As part of its contribution, the International Energy Agency plays a key role in collecting, validating, and harmonising data from its member and partner countries in line with JODI’s definitions and methodologies. The IEA provides technical expertise, quality assurance, and analytical support to ensure consistency and comparability across national submissions, thereby strengthening the reliability and usability of JODI data.

JODI’s data collection architecture has demonstrated its ability to provide more timely oil and gas market information, but timeliness alone is not enough. Timeliness, accuracy and completeness must all be given equal weighting if the data are to yield their full potential; however, for some countries there is still ample room for improvement in the latter two measures. Support from and co-operation among the JODI partners, alongside an increased focus on capacity building, will be key determinants of success for the next stage of JODI’s development.