The world will run out of oil much earlier than official estimates admit, warns a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency.

The Paris-based IEA assured in its 2008 World Energy Outlook that worldwide oil output would not peak before 2030.

But, the whistleblower claimed that the IEA had been underplaying an alarming shortage of oil as the real figures could trigger panic buying.

The senior official claimed that United States has been pressurizing the agency to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new oil fields.

Previous year the IEA claimed that production of oil could be raised from 83 million barrels a day to 105 million barrels a day.

However, several insiders think that maintaining oil supplies even at 90-95 million barrels a day would be impossible.