The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has said that oil demand in highly industrialised countries will shift from slight growth to a decline after 2020.
This was contained in the OPEC annual market outlook presented in Vienna on Tuesday adding that India and China will ensure that global oil consumption will grow over the next decades.
Global demand will reach 105.6 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2025, which is 6.9 million bpd higher than 2018, according to an annual market outlook.
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That increase will mainly come from developing and emerging economies in the long run.
India’s industry and growing middle-class consumers will need 5.4 million bpd more oil by 2040 and China will need an additional 4.4 million bpd by that year, OPEC estimated.
“India is projected to be the country with the fastest oil demand growth and the largest additional demand,’’ the report said.
In contrast, wealthy economies including North America, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and Oceania will consume 9.6 million bpd less, according to this long-term projection.
While demand in Europe, East Asia and Oceania is already falling, American markets are projected to follow by 2022, OPEC said, expecting “sluggish economic performance and continued efficiency improvements over the next few years’’.
The 14 OPEC countries, which pump 29 per cent of the world’s oil, see declining demand for their products until around 2025 when U.S. output is foreseen to start falling.
This news from OPEC will come with mixed feelings for Nigeria as Europe remains its largest buyer of crude with India coming a distant second.
The West African country has also continued to invest in discovering more crude oil and has no clear long term plans to diversify its energy sources from fossil fuel.