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oil demand continues to grow over the next 20 years, a view shared by rival BP and energy consultants like Wood Mackenzie. More importantly, most believe peak oil will have a long tail and that oil demand – set to reach 100 million barrels a day this year – won’t fall off abruptly even after it peaks. Instead, it should be considered a plateau rather than a sharp peak.
That’s because even if electric vehicles have remarkable penetration in the transportation market, oil demand is still expected grow in other sectors, including trucking, aviation and especially petrochemicals. Demand for products ranging from fertilizers to plastics and beauty products will drive roughly a quarter of the expected oil demand growth over the next five years, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Large emerging economies like China and India are still busy building massive new refineries and petrochemical facilities with price tags the size of a small country’s GDP, even as they roll out aggressive targets for adopting electric vehicles.
oil is dead. long live oil.
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