This proves once again that big oil and EIA never intended to predict anything realistic, instead opting to project their wishes for the future. Unfortunately, that doesn't fit into any branch of scientific forecasting methods that I have ever encountered.
Update: Dissident makes a good comment that may explain the thinking as delusional economics mathematics (i.e. the dismal science)
"The strategy the economists used was as simple as it was absurd—they substituted economic variables for physical ones. Utility (a measure of economic well-being) took the place of energy; the sum of utility and expenditure replaced potential and kinetic energy. A number of well-known mathematicians and physicists told the economists that there was absolutely no basis for making these substitutions. But the economists ignored such criticisms and proceeded to claim that they had transformed their field of study into a rigorously mathematical scientific discipline."So they seem to think they can make a mathematical analogy to the conservation of energy, whereby K.E. + P.E. = constant. Yes, medieval garbage based on some bizarre premise spurred by a very bad analogy.
Oh my, what medieval garbage.