For the first time in two years, the International Energy Agency today rejected analysts' predictions that global oil use has already reached its peak. I consider this a bad sign.
"Oil demand is set to return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2022," the IEA said in its report. monthly on the oil market , predicting that demand will increase towards an average of 99,5 million barrels per day in 2022.
The collapse of the demand for oil
Oil demand plummeted by 8,6 million barrels a day in 2020, a record figure due to travel bans and lockdowns.
Faced with this collapse, the oil giant BP has stated in a September report that the world has reached "peak oil", and that the demand for oil would never return to pre-pandemic levels. In December, Bloomberg News had echoed her declaring : "Peak oil is suddenly upon us".
But the IEA, an intergovernmental organization that includes the US, EU and Japan, believes that proponents of the peak oil theory have spoken too soon.
The (premature?) Song of the Black Swan
In the coming years, global demand for plastics will increase sales of petrochemicals, while the recovery of the travel industry will increase the use of aviation fuel, the IEA said. Oil, believed on the edge of the abyss (from the AIE itself!), will rise from its wells.
We are sure? According to the same organization, however, the growing popularity of remote working and the rise of electric and fuel-efficient vehicles will suppress some of the demand for oil. Furthermore, the asymmetric global distribution of vaccines to rich countries will result in oil demand in poorer countries recovering more slowly.
Despite these trends, the group insisted that demand is expected to exceed pre-COVID levels by the end of 2022.
Will the increase in oil demand make us even exceed the pre-Covid degradation levels?
The IEA considers it "unlikely" that meeting rising oil demand will be a problem. Production increases are expected in OPEC + countries such as Saudi Arabia, as well as in the United States, Canada, Brazil and Norway. If sanctions against Iran were lifted, then an additional 1,4 million barrels per day would reach the global oil market.
Did we joke, then? There ecological transition will he go to be blessed? I imagine that this prospect will lead the hydrocarbon giants to slow down investments for the transition to more sustainable energies. Is this the "normality" we want to return to?
