In a statement published on the OPEC website Thursday, Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said the concept of “peak oil demand” is nowhere to be seen in the cartel’s projections for future global crude oil demand.
“[A]s we look to the future it is the very versatility of oil that ensures that we do not see peak oil demand on the horizon,” Al Ghais said.
“Just as peak oil supply has never transpired, predictions of peak oil demand are following a similar trend.”
In my own research, I have been able to trace predictions for the world reaching so-called “peak oil” all the way back to the 1880s.
From that distant beginning through around 2010, peak oil theory was always about the world having somehow reached a peak in crude oil supply as all the big reserves had supposedly already been discovered.
For about 125 years, constant advances in technology and a creative and innovative industry invariably proved such pronouncements wrong, often laughably so.
With the ramping-up of the climate alarmist movement in the first decade of this century, narratives surrounding this always-wrong theory began to shift over to the demand side of the equation. Some anti-oil-and-gas activist groups even adopted the theory as a means of promoting the equally silly notion that the world’s remaining oil resources could simply be left in the ground as demand for them would soon be overwhelmed by rising demand for alternatives.
A decade later, that theory has also been proven laughably wrong, despite the “investment” of many trillions of dollars in debt-funded subsidies.
OPEC’s statement stands in stark contrast to the projection by the International Energy Agency that the world will somehow achieve peak oil demand by 2030. Al Ghais alludes to this preposterous notion, calling it a “dangerous commentary, especially for consumers,” that “will only lead to energy volatility on a potentially unprecedented scale.”
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Al Ghais’ statement comes in the wake of revised oil-demand growth projections from the IEA and OPEC, along with Goldman Sachs and the US Energy Information Administration for the remainder of 2024 and into 2025. Where the IEA revised its 2024 projection downward to 1 million barrels per day for 2024, even it projects a more robust 1.5 million bpd in growth for 2025.
The EIA raised its own growth estimate for 2024 from a very conservative 900,000 bpd to 1.1 million bpd.
Goldman Sachs comes in at a stronger 2024 estimate of 1.25 million bpd, based on strong global economic growth. The bank cites robust growth in jet fuel, petrochemical-driven LPG and naphtha, and gasoline and diesel demand as key drivers of this growth.
Delusions of Adequacy 