IEA Reinstates 2050 Peak Oil Demand Growth Forecast

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00:00This is their annual long-term report that's produced by the International Energy Agency

00:04and it's been quite controversial over the years. They had done away with what they call their

00:08current policy scenario, i.e. if nothing changes what happens to demand, and gone for scenarios

00:14that assumed we would take more drastic action against climate change. The IEA denies this as

00:20a response to the Trump administration to reinstate this forecast, but I think clearly

00:24it's acknowledgement of the shifting political winds around climate change. And what it says

00:28is right now, if current trends continue, far from having a peak in oil and gas consumption

00:34that many people have predicted, oil consumption will rise by 13% to the middle of the century,

00:41which is not good news for our prospects of tempering carbon emissions.

00:46Well, yeah, just take us through the supply side, because OPEC has been upping its production

00:51recently. That's the demand side, but what about supply?

00:54Yep. There's plenty of supply in the world, and I think one of the reasons that oil demand

00:59is still rising in the short and medium term is that it's relatively plentiful and relatively

01:03cheap. And that means that the shift to electric vehicles, and the IEA was explicit about this,

01:08may not be quite as quick as people expected some years ago. Of course, electricity prices

01:14are rising in many parts of the world because of the boom in demand from electricity and electrification

01:20and artificial intelligence and electric cars. Meanwhile, we have an oversupplied oil market,

01:25as you say, and that's keeping the price of gasoline and the diesel that people put in their cars

01:29relatively low by historical standards.