June 15, 2023: Global oil demand growth will trickle nearly to a halt in the coming years and height this decade, the International Energy Agency stated, with Chinese consumption set delays after an initial pent-up recovery. 

“The shifting to a clean energy economy is picking up pace, with a peak in global oil demand in sight before the end of this decade as electric vehicles, energy efficiency, and other technologies advance,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement.

In its latest medium-term market report, published Wednesday, the agency forecasts that global oil demand under current market and policy conditions will rise 6% from 2022 to reach 105.7 million barrels per day in 2028 on the back of the petrochemical and aviation sectors.

Annual demand growth, however, will thin down from 2.4 million barrels per day to 400,000 barrels per day in 2028.

“The downturn in advanced economies renders the global outlook even more conditional on China’s post-Covid pandemic reopening being able to maintain its early momentum, which should eventually lift global trade and manufacturing,” the agency declared while stressing Beijing’s “pent-up” consumption will peak between-2023 after a 1.5 million-barrels-per-day rebound but lose momentum to only an average 290,000 barrels per day every year from 2024 to 2028.

An “unprecedented reshuffling of international trade flows” and emergency releases from the strategic petroleum reserves of IEA members in the previous year “allowed industry inventories to rebuild, easing market tensions” between demand pick-up, the world energy body stated.