A report released today by the OECD’s energy agency predicts that global demand for crude oil will reach its peak at the end of the decade, in line with new projections reaffirming forecasts published in 2023.
Oil consumption is expected to slightly decrease in 2030, following a peak the previous year at around 105.5 million barrels per day.
Despite prevailing climate skepticism and the U.S. president’s call to “drill at all costs,” “a peak in global oil demand is still on the horizon,” stated the IEA.
In the United States, the world’s largest oil consumer, this decline is projected as early as 2026, and in 2028 in China, the second-largest consumer.
Currently, “the Israeli-Iranian conflict focuses attention on immediate risks to energy security; however, the IEA’s new medium-term outlook predicts that global oil supply will grow much more rapidly than demand in the coming years,” the report notes.
Global oil demand will increase by 2.5 million barrels per day between 2024 and 2030, reaching a level “around 105.5 million barrels per day by the end of the decade.”
However, “annual growth slows,” from approximately 700,000 barrels per day in 2025 and 2026 “to marginal growth in the years following, with a slight decline expected in 2030,” says the IEA, relying on current policies and market trends.
According to the agency, the end of the oil era is approaching, driven by “below-trend economic growth hampered by global trade tensions and fiscal imbalances,” as well as the “acceleration of oil replacement in the transport sector,” with the rise of electric vehicles, and energy production.
Predictably, the IEA’s forecasts remain out of sync with those of OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which in September 2024 deemed the phased-out elimination of fossil fuels a “fantasy.”
“Oil demand reaches new records every year,” insisted OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al-Ghais on Monday during the Energy Asia conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, asserting that the “theory” of peak oil “has been proven wrong time and again.”
On Monday, OPEC estimated that global oil demand would rise by 1.3 million barrels per day in 2025 and 2026.
