Rising geopolitical risk in the…
Despite forecasts of peak oil…
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has announced that it will publish its 2025 oil demand forecast report in April, about three months earlier than its former schedule after OPEC expedited its equivalent report by six months.
Last week, OPEC released its 2025 oil demand forecast wherein it maintained its earlier prediction of robust demand growth in 2024 and 2025 led by China and the Middle East.
OPEC has forecast that oil demand will grow by 1.85 mb/d in 2025 to hit 106.21 million bpd. For the current year, OPEC maintained its earlier prediction that demand growth will clock in at 2.25 million bpd. OPEC’s 2025 forecast came out on the same day OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais published an article that disputed a commonly held view that global oil demand is close to a peak, and reiterated earlier calls for continued investments in the industry.
"What is clear is that peak oil demand is not showing up in any reliable and robust short- and medium-term forecasts. It is a challenge to see peak oil demand by the end of the decade, a mere six years away," he wrote.
The IEA has been much more bearish. According to the Paris-based energy watchdog, global oil demand growth will halve in 2024 thanks to below-trend economic growth in major economies, booming electric vehicle fleet and efficiency improvements. The IEA is also opposed to new investments in oil and gas saying such investments are likely to end up as stranded assets when oil demand plummets.
Bloomberg’s predictions closely mirror those by the IEA. Last year, Bloomberg predicted that global demand for road fuel will peak in 2027 at 49 million barrels per day before entering a phase of terminal decline mainly due to rapid adoption of electric vehicles.
According to Bloomberg, EVs, ever-improving fuel efficiency and shared mobility will displace a combined 20 million barrels per day in oil demand by 2040, 10x the volume they are currently displacing
By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com
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Alex Kimani is a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer and researcher for Safehaven.com.