The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has projected 6.2m barrel per day growth in oil demand in 2021.
OPEC Secretary General, Mohammad Barkindo, gave the projection at the ‘Crescent Ideas Forum’ on Monday.
“Our OPEC outlook for 2020 oil demand is now slightly above 90m barrels per day.
“This represents a sharp decline of nearly 10m per day from where we started the year, and almost an 11m per day contraction compared to what we forecast in January.
“In 2021, we expect growths to bounce back to 6.2m per day to just over 96m per day, compared to our pre-coronavirus expectations for demand reaching almost 102m per day next year.
“The recent revisions are due to the easing pace of the economic recovery and recent COVID-19 containment measures, which are assumed to impact transportation and industrial fuel demand well into next year,” Barkindo said.
He noted that preliminary data for October showed that total Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development commercial oil stocks were 208mb above the latest five-year average, compared to 13mb below the five-year average in January.
In spite of the current outlook, Barkindo assured that crude oil would continue to be relevant in the foreseeable future, up to 2045, notin that oil demand is expected to rise by almost 10mbpd from 2019 levels to around 109mbpd by 2040 and then begin to plateau.
He added, “Non-member countries of the OECD will be the growth powerhouse and members will account for around 68 per cent of overall oil demand by 2045, with the economic tigers of India and China leading this growth.
“In absolute terms, we expect oil demand in the developing and emerging economies rising by 22.5m bpd to around 74m bpd in 2045. The outlook for crude oil may look anemic now, but we anticipate a gradual normalisation of demand growth as the world recovers from the COVID-19 shock.
“Our analysts foresee global oil demand returning to relatively robust annual growth and reaching nearly 104m bpd by 2025.”
However, he said, in the longer term, a number of factors would drive consumption such as population and economic growth, especially in developing and emerging economies as OPEC said it expected the global economy to more than double from 2019 to 2045, to $258tn and the population to grow by at least 20 per cent, to 9.5bn.
“Simply put, our world will continue to thirst for energy. The World Oil Outlook anticipates that oil will remain the dominant fuel in the global energy mix for the foreseeable future, accounting for a nearly 28 per cent share in 2045, followed by gas at around 25 per cent.
”In this respect, our OPEC outlook for 2020 oil demand is now slightly above 90m bpd.”
