“There is no peak demand on the horizon,” OPEC Secretary General Haitham al-Ghais said in the organization’s World Oil Outlook, which sees global thirst for liquid fuels increasing from 102.2 million b/d in 2023 to 120.1 million b/d in 2050, “with the potential for it to be higher”.
The findings, Ghais said, underscored that “the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas bears no relation to fact.”
This year’s outlook pegs oil demand at 118.9 million b/d for 2045, a 2.5% upward revision, and then adds the 2050 forecast, which OPEC said reveals the extent to which India, alongside some other Asian economies, the Middle East and Africa will drive demand growth.
It sees combined demand in those four regions increasing by 22 million b/d between 2023 and 2050.
The IEA expects fossil fuel use to peak before 2030.
Such rhetoric endangers global energy security by discouraging needed investments in oil and gas production, OPEC has said.
OPEC comprises 12 crude exporting nations, whose economies rely heavily on oil revenues, and since 2017 it has partnered with Russia and several other producers in an alliance called OPEC+ to manage the market through output quotas.