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 demand for oil would never return to pre-pandemic levels. In December, Bloomberg News echoed her opinion declaring : “Peak oil is suddenly upon us.”
But the IEA, an intergovernmental organization that includes the US, EU and Japan, believes that supporters 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 boost sales of petrochemicals, while the recovery of the travel sector will increase the use of jet fuel, the IEA said. Oil, believed to be on the brink 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 demand for oil. Furthermore, the lopsided global distribution of vaccines towards rich countries will mean that oil demand in poorer countries recovers 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 also cause us to exceed pre-Covid levels of degradation?
The IEA considers it “unlikely” that meeting growing oil demand will be a problem. Production increases are expected from OPEC+ countries such as Saudi Arabia, as well as 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 in the transition to more sustainable energy. Is this the "normality" we want to return to?
